Mathieu Van der Poel: Solo Cipressa attack ‘would surprise me’ at Milano-Sanremo – will Tadej Pogacar try it?

Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin–Deceuninck), speaking exclusively to Eurosport ahead of this weekend’s Milano-Sanremo, says it “would surprise” him were anyone to mount a solo attack on the race’s penultimate Cipressa climb, amid hints from Tadej Pogacar’s team about his intentions.

But since 1996, no one has managed to make an attack on the Cipressa stick, with the race invariably being decided closer to the finish, either on the final climb – the Poggio – or towards the Mediterranean coast.

However, according to Pogacar’s UAE Team Emirates sports manager Matxin Joxean Fernandez, moves might be afoot to change that statistic.

“Full gas on the Cipressa, full gas to the Poggio, it’s a hard, hard race, but the plan is to win Milano-Sanremo. Tadej is a super rider and we have plans for many situations.

“In my opinion, the favourite for Milano-Sanremo is Mathieu van der Poel. He’s the number one and he’s the last winner of this race,” Fernandez added.

“Tadej, though, is in really good condition. He was in super good condition at Strade Bianche but this race isn’t always decided by super condition. In the last few years, the race has come down to an explosive final five minutes. It’s about good positioning with good legs and there are lots of important points in the race where you can’t make a mistake.

“If you don’t have a good position onto the Cipressa or the Poggio then you end up wasting a lot of energy. In my opinion, this is the most complicated and tactical race of the year. The other Monuments are about power and Milano-Sanremo is more about the situation in the race. After 280km this race is decided in the little moments.”

Van der Poel’s presence in the season’s first Monument adds to the intrigue, with the Dutchman making his road bow having taken all before him in the recent cyclo-cross campaign – and having won Milano-Sanremo last year.

Giving his view on where this year’s race will be won and lost, Van der Poel told Eurosport: “The first tension is the Turchino for the downhill, but then actually when you hit the coast it’s so fast until the finish line. It’s just chaos, really fast downhill and then positioning is always super difficult as well.

“The roads are quite twisty and also narrow sometimes so it’s just a difficult race in the end.

“You have to be able to burn some guys as well going into Cipressa maybe, because it’s also not realistic to go over Cipressa with a whole team these last years, so you really need to make a good decision and also dare to burn a few guys maybe already before Cipressa just for the positioning.

“It’s just trying to be in a really good position on Poggio, and just see what happens there. I think it’s really difficult to make a tactic, like last year I didn’t plan the attack, you have to hope for good legs and that’s the most important thing.”

Assessing specifically the chances of someone – Pogacar or otherwise – going long from the Cipressa – the Dutchman added: “It’s really difficult.

“Of course we already saw in the past that they’ll make it a really hard race as well on Cipressa, but to go there alone would surprise me – but you never know.”

“There are 11 km between Cipressa and the Poggio. It’s totally unfavourable to attackers,” Gilbert said.

“I see, however, him [Pogacar] imposing a strong pace with his team on Cipressa, but his final attack will be on the Poggio. He attacked three times two years ago; nobody has ever done that. He’s the only one who did it.

“He’s circling around, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they go all out this year.”

Van der Poel is starting later on the road than is perhaps customary these days, but as a multi-discipline rider, the Alpecin Deceunick man opened up on why that is.

He said: “Especially the calendar makes it really difficult if you want to do cyclo-cross, and also this year I want to go to Liege as well so that’s quite a long period.

“Nowadays it’s just really difficult without proper preparation to go to a race somewhere, you need time to prepare yourself well.”

And on how he has tried to build endurance to withstand the longest professional one-day race in the world – at 298km – he revealed: “[I’ve been doing] especially really hard ones [rides], where I dug really deep and killed myself a bit on Spanish roads, but I also did a lot of hours, so a bit of a combination.

“We tried to make it more tough than we did in the past maybe because we knew that Sanremo was my first race and we really try to be in a decent shape immediately.”

Van der Poel admitted to reliving last year’s victory, and how he considers the race “unique”.

“[I relive it] yea, for sure, I think Sanremo is one of the nicest to win of course.

“It’s a super difficult one as well but it’s such a special one coming down Poggio and then on the Via Roma, so it’s quite unique.”