Milan-San Remo is a race of superlatives: the longest; the oldest; the most prestigious. It’s the first Monument of the year and marks the proper start of the cycling season. The historic route snakes its way through almost 300km of northern Italian countryside, from the Lombardy plains over the Passo del Turchino, before heading south and skimming the Ligurian coastline all the way to the finish. But despite its monstrous length, this is a race routinely won or lost in the last 10km. And that inescapable fact is all thanks to the final climb: the Poggio di San Remo.
Unlike the race that immortalised it, the Poggio is largely unremarkable on first inspection. It’s not particularly long, high or steep, yet every year it serves as a stage for some of the sport’s most epic battles. Averaging a modest 4% and rarely creeping above 7% at its steepest, the 3.7km hillside road is light work for fresh legs, but placed in the final minutes of one of the most arduous bike races on the planet it becomes something else entirely.