Milan-San Remo

Anthony Tan looks past Gilbert to his true Milan-San Remo favorites, and considers what the March races told us about the Tour de France

Flanders runner-up scratches from La Primavera to recover in time for northern classics

2009 Milan-San Remo runner-up speaks out on Flanders changes, Hushovd departure

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Spartacus ready to avenge disappointing 2011 classics after Italian wins

With Cavendish, Goss and Gilbert among more than a dozen riders to to peel their numbers in Offida

Defending champ pulls out as precaution ahead of "La Primavera" title defense

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World champion Mark Cavendish will make his Team Sky debut at the Tour of Qatar next month

NetApp in, Acqua e Sapone out

The veteran Italian confirmed he will race in the WorldTour season debut in what's part of an early-season racing schedule designed to arrive at Milan-San Remo in winning form.

It was with grit, great class and perfect timing that Matt Goss won Milan-San Remo on Saturday. He wasn’t meant to win though.

A Japanese flag signed by all the riders at the start of Saturday's Milan-San Remo is being auctioned to benefit victims of last week's earthquake in Japan.

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Solo breakaways find it tough going in Milan-San Remo, the sprinters' classic.

Milan-San Remo

• 1. Matthew Harley Goss (Aus), HTC-Highroad, 6:51:10
• 2. Fabian Cancellara (Sui), Leopard-Trek, s.t.
• 3. Philippe Gilbert (Bel), Omega Pharma-Lotto, s.t.
• 4. Alessandro Ballan (Ita), BMC Racing Team, s.t.
• 5. Filippo Pozzato (Ita), Team Katusha, s.t.

Graham Watson captures the action at the 2011 Milan-San Remo.

Matthew Goss outkicks Fabian Cancellara and Phillipe Gilbert to win Milan-San Remo in a thrilling eight-up sprint.

MILAN (VN) — Mark Cavendish was focused Friday afternoon when he met the press ahead of Saturday’s Milan-San Remo. The 2009 winner of the season’s first one-day monument will share leadership duties for HTC-Highroad with the up-and-coming Matt Goss.

MILAN (VN) — Fans may notice a piece of white tape on the arms of riders at Milan-San Remo Saturday. In a release distributed Friday, the Association of Professional Cyclists said that riders would carry the tape as a symbol of unity over the anti-doping proposals made in the last week by the groups representing teams (AIGCP), doctors (AIMEC) and riders (CPA).

A close look at the new Specialized Venge aero bike Cavendish and others will ride Saturday

MILAN, Italy (VN) – Fabian Cancellara says he is carefree headed into Milan-San Remo on Saturday, one day after he turns 30.

German rider Patrik Sinkewitz (Farnese Vini - Neri Sottoli) is facing a lifetime ban after testing positive for human growth hormones from a blood sample taken during the GP di Lugano in late February.

2011 Milan-San Remo startlist

Maps and profiles for Saturday's race

LUCCA, Italy (VN) – Milan-San Remo is a lot of things. La classica di Primavera is the first monument of the season. At 298 kilometers, it is the longest one-day race on the UCI WorldTour. Milan-San Remo is the sprinters’ classic and it is multiple races in one seven-hour day, with the early attacks and the slow build-up to the climax of the Poggio and Cipressa climbs before the lights-out run-in to San Remo.

Milan-San Remo winners, 1907-2010

Some of Italy's greatest races continued to thrive even during World War II.

La Classicissimia, Milan-San Remo, gets underway Saturday. Follow along on VeloNews.com via our new Live Update page. After the race check in for a complete report by European correspondent Andrew Hood and photos from the legendary Graham Watson. To whet your appetite, this morning we are sharing a few of Graham's best photos of the race from as far back as 1984. Remember that you can find the full archive of VeloNews.com's Milan-San Remo coverage at www.velonews.com/milan-sanremo.

LUCA, Italy (VN) - Last year's runner-up Tom Boonen will lead Quick Step into Milan-San Remo Saturday. The Belgian said Wednesday that he has recovered from the flu that held him back at Tirreno-Adriatico last week.

With the 2009 winner and the most successful sprinter of the 2011 season, HTC-Highroad will enter Saturday’s Milan-San Remo, the first of the spring classics, with two viable options.

SAN BENEDETTO DEL TRONTO, Italy (VN) – It is four days before the season’s first one-day monument at Milan-San Remo and 2008 winner Fabian Cancellara (Leopard-Trek) is making plans. But those plans are much farther reaching than the 300 kilometers he’ll face Saturday.

ROME (VN) — Take two time trials and split them with two days for the sprinters and another three in the mountains, two of them at 240km each, and you get a new-look Tirreno-Adriatico. The race of the two seas opens Wednesday and many of the top classics riders and Tour de France and Giro d'Italia contenders are set for a showdown in the heart of Italy.

Though Mark Cavendish has been relatively quiet so far this season, HTC-Highroad brass is confident that their ace sprinter is poised for a brilliant season.

Last year the second half of Boonen's campaign was compromised following a career-threatening second positive test for cocaine, but this season the big Quick Step rider, a world champion in 2005, appears reborn.

Replay of live coverage for 2010 Milan-San Remo

Results - Milan San Remo, 2010

HTC-Columbia manager Rolf Aldag says despite his recent lack of results, Cavendish is still their man for Saturday, and 'there is no Plan B.'

A knee injury will keep Cervelo TestTeam's Heinrich Haussler from starting Milan-San Remo Saturday, and the team's medical officer s not sure when the German will return to racing.

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If Mark Cavendish is to be believed, he's not among the favorites to win this year's la classica di Primavera

Philippe Gilbert went on a tear at the end of 2009, winning four races in a row including the season-closing classic Giro di Lombardia. This year, the Omega Pharma-Lotto rider is aiming for wins in the spring classics, beginning with Milan-San Remo on Saturday.

BMC will be led by Italian Alessandro Ballan, who preceded Evans as world champion in 2008, with American George Hincapie, Dutchman Karsten Kroon and German Marcus Burghardt expected to play key roles. Americans Jeff Louder and Brent Bookwalter also will start.

Fröhlinger and Gerdemann are back from the sick list, but Wegmann and Ciolek are still recovering from injuries.

Lance Armstrong confirms he will race at Milan-San Remo

Filippo Pozzato believes he’s poised to win at least one major classic this spring and he could care less which one it is.

There are a lot of big names expected for the 101st edition of Milan-San Remo next month, but Riccardo Riccò isn’t among them.

Lance Armstrong will be back in the spring classics this year in a big way. RadioShack sport director Johan Bruyneel told Biciciclismo that Armstrong will race Milan-San Remo, Tour of Flanders, Amstel Gold Race and Liège-Bastogne-Liège.

The 101st Milan-San Remo will be held in 2010.

It’s official: Tyler Farrar will miss this year’s northern classics. The bad news was confirmed by doctors Sunday, who diagnosed an acromioclavicular (AC) separation in Farrar’s right shoulder resulting from his crash in the 100th Milan-San Remo. “It’s not severe enough to require surgery, nothing is broken,” Farrar told VeloNews by telephone. “It’s not that bad of an injury, it’s just bad enough that you couldn’t race a cobblestone classic. It’s just an inconvenient timing.”

Monumental. The night before a race, the last thing I do before I climb into bed is to prepare my bag for the next day. Each rider has a suitcase and a race bag. The suitcase travels to the finish in the team truck and we carry the race bag, which holds everything we’ll need for the day, in the bus on the way to the start. With everything ready to go, tucked in bed, I look over the race book one last time before closing my eyes.

Stuart O'Grady, who was injured in a fall during Milan-San Remo on Saturday, will be forced to skip the Spring Classics, his Saxo Bank team said Sunday. The 35-year-old Australian fractured his right collarbone and has broken a rib. He also suffered bruising between the lungs and the ribs. "It is extremely sad to see the Classics disappear because of a crash," O'Grady said. "The past several months of hard work had a purpose and focus – the classics and especially Paris-Roubaix. Now I've seen it all crumble, but hopefully I'll get the opportunity to come back later."

If there was any doubt about who is cycling’s most exciting sprinter, Mark Cavendish erased it Saturday with an explosive victory in the 100th Milan-San Remo. Judges had to break out the zoom lens to determine Cavendish the winner in a photo-finish to a devastated Heinrich Haussler as Cervélo TestTeam went two-three with Thor Hushovd rounding out the podium. Haussler pounced out of the left side of the pack with 350 meters to go —he said to set up Hushovd — only to look back and see that Hushovd wasn’t on his wheel and a surging Cavendish was closing in fast.

Milan-San Remo didn’t end the way Tyler Farrar would have liked. The Garmin-Slipstream rider -- fresh off beating eventual winner Mark Cavendish in a bunch sprint this week at Tirreno-Adriatico – crashed out with a possible broken clavicle. Farrar flew back to his home base in Belgium on Saturday night and will be treated by doctors there, but team officials are worried that the injury could take Farrar out of the upcoming northern classics.

Lance Armstrong wanted a long, hard day at the office and that’s what he got in Saturday’s Milan-San Remo. In his first race back on European roads since winning the 2005 Tour de France, Armstrong lost contact with the fast-charging peloton near the top of the Cipressa climb with about 25km to go. A lead group of about 40 riders stayed clear to fight for the victory while the seven-time Tour champion -- racing for the first time since the conclusion of Tour of California on Feb. 22 -- crossed the line in 125th at 8:19 in the second group.

Mark Cavendish proved the skeptics wrong yet again. After most experts believed he couldn’t get over the late-race climbs, the Columbia-Highroad rider sprinted to a dramatic victory to win the 100th Milan-San Remo. Here are excerpts from his post-race press conference: Question: What does it mean to you to win a classic?

Lance Armstrong says his return to the top spot of the winner’s podium at the Tour de France is no guarantee. The seven-time Tour champion is confident he will attain a high level come July, but admitted he cannot take for granted he will be the same rider who won barnstormed to seven consecutive titles from 1999-2005.

Lance Armstrong clicks into his pedals Saturday for the 100th Milan-San Remo in his first European race since winning the 2005 Tour de France, but even he admits he isn’t expecting to stand on the winner’s podium. The seven-time Tour champ acknowledges the Italian classic doesn’t suit his style of racing, yet Armstrong is promising to make a strong showing in the 298km race.

Fabian Cancellara won’t be defending his Milan-San Remo title on Saturday and admits that he likely won’t be back at his best in time for the northern classics. A training crash and illness have derailed Cancellara’s hopes of repeating his extraordinary spring campaign last year that saw him win Monte Paschi, Tirreno-Adriatico and San Remo and claim second in Paris-Roubaix. Cancellara told VeloNews his spring campaign is all but a wash this year.