One of Italy’s most famous climbs is not really a climb at all.
Italy packs plenty of mythic summits. The Stelvio, the Gavia, and the Mortirolo all stack up in the Italian Alps like murderer’s row, and all rightly deserve their legendary status.
The Poggio? Meh, at 4 kilometers long with an average gradient of 3.7 percent, it’s not even a climb, at least not by WorldTour standards.
Yet that rather anonymous strip of asphalt laid in among homes, a few greenhouses, and a bar at the top delivers one of cycling’s most thrilling and decisive moments every spring at the sharp end of Milan-San Remo.
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The Poggio, by sheer coincidence, becomes the decider in one of men’s cycling’s famed five monuments.
The otherwise generic ramp that doesn’t require a top amateur to shift out of the big ring is immediately associated with some of the biggest names in cycling history. Eddy Merckx won over it. Sean Kelly ruled it. Matej Mohorič flew down it, dropper post and all.
It’s so innocuous that on the year’s other 364 days, an errant cycling tourist will have a hard time finding it.
It kicks up off the SS-1, the coastal highway that leads the peloton down from Italian Riviera toward San Remo, the posh resort town that hosts the finish. Turn right on Via Duca d’Aosta, and you’ve found it.
What makes the Poggio — added to the route in 1960 — such a unique challenge is where it comes in the race.
Any climb, even one as pedestrian as the Poggio, coming at the sharp end of a nearly 300km race is going to hurt.
Milan-San Remo is like a bottle of champagne at nearly 300km long that’s been iced, taken out of the bucket, steadily and then rapidly shaken, and then popped the cork with less than 10km to go.
The Poggio — its official name is the Poggio di San Remo — won’t break anyone’s knees, yet some of cycling’s most thrilling exploits have happened on both sides of the otherwise anonymous hump.
Dove si deciderà la Milano-Sanremo presented by @CA_Ita 2023? Scrivilo nei commenti!
— Milano Sanremo (@Milano_Sanremo) March 6, 2023
There’s been talk for decades to alter the San Remo route, yet organizers have stubbornly chosen not to.
Even the limited addition of the La Maniè climb used from 2008 to 2014 at about 50km to go so subtly changed the dynamic of the race that organizers yanked it out. Milan-San Remo is one race that’s fine just the way it is.
Some believe that if Milan-San Remo is harder it would be more interesting. And in most cases in bike racing, that’s largely true, but not for La Primavera.
It’s a unique race that is almost perfect just the way it is.
Most races have been forced to adapt to modern cycling’s demands, and there’s been a steady march toward harder, shorter, faster across stage racing. Add gravel, mega-short stages of 90km, and an endless parade of punchy climbs, grand tour riding in the 2020s looks very different than it did even at the turn of the century.
Yet San Remo stands eternal.
At 294km, it is the longest men’s race on the WorldTour. It’s often called the easiest to race, but the hardest to win. And therein lies its beautiful charm.
The long distance and its early season date make it a challenging puzzle to unravel. All the top riders want to win it, and as the peloton goes ever faster on a course that never changes, sprinters have a harder time winning for what for decades was called the sprinter’s classic.
Once the race clears Passo del Turchino at about the halfway point, things really start to ramp up as the race hits the Mediterranean Coast.
The string of headlands along the “capi” on the main coast road open the ever-accelerating peloton to wind and increasingly harder terrain.
Up first is the Cipressa, a climb included in 1982, another otherwise bland climb that wouldn’t rate on anyone’s Strava ride board if it wasn’t positioned before the Poggio on the way to the Via Roma.
Racing can be nervous, and there are usually a few pileups, but inevitably all the “bigs” hit the Poggio with everything in play.
It’s a 10km rollercoaster from there to the finish line. Who can win? The potential winner’s list is longer at San Remo than any race on the calendar. Sprinters, monument men, time trialists, GC riders, and even wild descenders all believe in their chances over the Poggio.
On 364 days a year, the road is busy with cars, trucks, and hordes of cyclists retracing the Poggio.
It’s a wonderful ride along the coast. There’s a new bike path along an old railway line that will get you off the heavily trafficked main road almost all the way down to the Cipressa. From there, you can turn onto the race course and hammer out the closing 30km.
On one magical Saturday every spring, the Poggio plays king-maker and dream-breaker in very quick succession for the peloton’s toughest riders.
And the magic on the Poggio plays out.
It’s cycling blandest but most drama-producing climb of the year.
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