Whether 2022 Matej Mohoric's trick with lowerable seat post, 2018 Vincenzo Nibali's surprise attack on the Poggio or Gerald Ciolek's victory on snow and ice in 2013 - Milan-San Remo has almost always delivered stories that belong in every annual review over the past ten years. The year 2023 is in no way inferior.
Milan-San Remo 2023: A clash of the stars
With Tadej Pogacar, Wout van Aert and Mathieu van der Poel the three defining figures of the 2023 Classics season met here for the first time. As always, the question was: breakaway or sprinter? But that was answered quite quickly in 2023. UAE Team Emirates broke up the peloton early on the Poggio. When a small gap opened up to the rest of the group after the first eight riders, Pogacar's team-mate Matteo Trentin made sure with a sly manoeuvre that the riders behind him were no longer able to catch up with the leaders.
Meanwhile, Tim Wellens continued to push the pace at the front. Pogacar attacked with 6.6 kilometres to go. Filippo Ganna jumped straight away. Mathieu van der Poel was in the rear positions at this point. The Dutchman held back discreetly, utilising Wout van Aert's slipstream to catch up with Pogacar again. When many spectators had already prepared themselves for a stalemate between Pogacar, van Aert and van der Poel, van der Poel buttered another one on top. Neither van Aert nor Pogacar were able to follow the Dutchman's attack just before the famous telephone box on the Poggio di San Remo.
Mathieu van der Poel follows in the footsteps of Raymond Poulidor
Van der Poel went into the descent with a three-second lead, van Aert followed suit, the two exceptional cyclists levelled out on the descent, the gap widened further on the flat and the gap between van Aert, Pogacar and Ganna grew to eleven seconds. It was clear: only a crash or a defect could stop van der Poel. With 100 metres to go, the race leader straightened up, patted his helmet and followed in the footsteps of his grandfather Raymond Poulidor, who won Milan-San Remo 62 years earlier. Ganna took second place, ahead of van Aert and Pogacar.
For van der Poel, who had previously the fifth cyclocross world championship title it was the starting signal for an outstanding 2023 road season. Tour of Flanders had to settle for second place behind Pogacar, followed a week later by triumph in the Paris-Roubaix and in August the world championship title in the road race.
Record hunt at the Poggio di San Remo
And while we have seen the odd victory in San Remo in recent years that only crystallised in the final metres, this time it was a triumph with a crowbar. Van der Poel rode to his success "a la pedale", as they say in cycling jargon, i.e. without any tactical games, with sheer power. For the 3.7 kilometres with an average gradient of 3.9 per cent up to the Poggio, the Dutchman needed 5:40 minutes - six seconds faster than the previous record set by Maurizio Fondriest and Laurent Jalabert in 1995 - even though tailwind conditions prevailed in 2023. There is no official data for the riders, but according to Gazzetta dello Sport van der Poel should 564 watts on average on the Poggio, or to put it another way: 7.5 watts per kilogramme for almost six minutes.
Results Milan - San Remo 2023
- Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck) 6:25:23
- Filippo Ganna (Ineos Grenadiers) +0:15
- Wout van Aert (Jumbo-Vimsa) +0:15
- Tadej Pogacar (UAE Team Emirates) +0:15
- Sören Kragh Andersen (Alpecin-Deceuninck) +0:26
- Mads Pedersen (Trek-Segafredo) +0:26
- Neilson Powless (EF Education EasyPost) +0:26
- Matej Mohoric (Bahrain-Victorious) +0:26
- Anthony Turgis (TotalEnergies) +0:26
- Jasper Stuyven (Trek-Segafredo) +0:26
That Milan-San Remo is supposed to be a boring race is not something I can subscribe to. For me, the last 15 minutes of the Classicissima with the battle of the cycling giants was the most exciting quarter of an hour in professional cycling in 2023 and therefore my racing bike moment of the year.
