Milano-Sanremo

Milano-Sanremo is a one-day bike race and the opening Monument of the cycling season, held each March from Lombardy to the Ligurian coast. The race covers nearly 300 kilometers before a finale shaped by the Cipressa, the Poggio di Sanremo, and the run into Via Roma. First held in 1907, it is the longest of the five Monuments.

Milano-Sanremo, Milan-San Remo in English, is the first Monument of the cycling season and the longest, close to 300 kilometers from Lombardy to the Ligurian coast. It has been raced since 1907, and its finale crosses the Cipressa and the Poggio before the finishing straight on Via Roma.

What is Milano-Sanremo?

Milano-Sanremo, Milan-San Remo in English, is a one-day professional bike race in Italy, held in March between the Milan area and the resort town of Sanremo on the Ligurian coast. It is the first of the season’s five Monuments, the one-day races that have each been run for more than a hundred years: Milano-Sanremo, the Tour of Flanders, Paris-Roubaix, Liège-Bastogne-Liège and Il Lombardia.

How long is Milano-Sanremo?

Milano-Sanremo is almost 300 kilometers long, about 185 miles, which makes it the longest of the Monuments. The 2026 route measured 298 kilometers from Pavia, south of Milan, to Sanremo.

A failed car race and the 1907 start

In 1906 La Gazzetta dello Sport ran a Milan to Sanremo car race in two stages, by its own admission a failure, and switched to bicycles the following year. On April 14, 1907, at 4:30 in the morning and in pouring rain, 33 riders left the Conca Fallata inn beside the Naviglio Pavese in Milan to ride 281 kilometers. Lucien Petit-Breton won the sprint of a three-rider group.

Three years later the race ran through cold, hail and snow, only four riders finished, and Eugène Christophe won. Costante Girardengo won six times between 1918 and 1928. His first win came after a 200-kilometer solo, still the longest in the race’s history. His last came at 35, in a two-rider sprint against the world champion Alfredo Binda.

The Turchino pass and the Capi

In that first race Giovanni Gerbi led over the Passo del Turchino by three minutes while the rain turned to snow. The pass is still on the route, and so are the three Capi on the coast road before Imperia: Capo Mele, Capo Cervo and Capo Berta. In 1946, in the first edition after the war, Fausto Coppi dropped Lucien Teisseire on the Turchino, came out of the summit tunnel alone with 145 kilometers left and reached Sanremo about 14 minutes ahead. Coppi won three times and Gino Bartali four, two before the war and two after.

The 2020 race, moved to August by the pandemic, left out the Turchino and the Capi and reached the coast over the Colle di Nava, after several mayors of coastal towns objected to its passage. Wout van Aert won it in a two-rider sprint against Julian Alaphilippe, who had attacked near the top of the Poggio.

Eddy Merckx’s seven wins

Eddy Merckx first won in 1966, in a sprint, aged 20 years, 9 months and 2 days, and he is still the youngest winner. He started the race ten times and won seven: another sprint in 1967, solo victories in 1969, 1971 and 1972, the sprint of a small group ahead of Francesco Moser in 1975, and a last win in 1976, when he made the difference on the Poggio. That seventh win broke Girardengo’s record, and it was the last Monument Merckx won. Belgian riders won 16 times between 1954 and 1981, three of them through Roger De Vlaeminck.

When the Poggio and the Cipressa were added

The organizers came to see the Turchino as too far from the finish to decide the race. They sent the route up the Poggio di Sanremo at the start of the 1960s, and Raymond Poulidor won in 1961 by going clear alone on the new climb. In 1982 the organizer Vincenzo Torriani added the Cipressa. Marc Gomez, a first-year professional from the early breakaway, won that edition.

The Cipressa is 5.6 kilometers long at 4.1 percent and ends with a technical descent back to the Aurelia coast road. The Poggio begins with 9 kilometers to go: 3.7 kilometers at just under 4 percent, with four hairpins in the first two kilometers and a narrow, twisting descent into the outskirts of Sanremo. Le Manie, a steeper climb earlier on the coast, was part of the route from 2008 to 2013.

Kelly’s descent in 1992 and the sprinters’ years

In 1992 Moreno Argentin crossed the top of the Poggio alone with what looked like a winning gap. Sean Kelly, 35 years old and distanced on the climb, caught him as they entered the final kilometer and beat him in the sprint. “I realised Argentin was losing five metres on every bend,” Kelly said afterwards.

From the late 1990s the race belonged to the sprinters. Erik Zabel won four times between 1997 and 2001, beaten in 1999 by a late attack from Andrei Tchmil, who at 36 is the oldest winner. In 2004 Zabel raised his arms before the line, and Óscar Freire passed him to win by 11 thousandths of a second. Freire won again in 2007 and 2010. Mario Cipollini, Alessandro Petacchi, Mark Cavendish, Alexander Kristoff, John Degenkolb and Arnaud Démare all won between 2002 and 2016.

Nibali, Stuyven and Mohorič: late attacks since 2017

In 2017 three riders kept clear of the sprinters, and Michał Kwiatkowski beat Peter Sagan and Alaphilippe in a photo finish. Vincenzo Nibali attacked midway up the Poggio in 2018 and held off the peloton; he is still the last Italian winner. Jasper Stuyven won in 2021 with an attack on the flat road after the descent, two kilometers from the line, while the favorites watched each other.

A year later Matej Mohorič went clear on the descent itself. His bike carried a dropper seatpost, a mountain bike part that lowers the saddle out of the way. He won by two seconds from Anthony Turgis.

Van der Poel, Pogačar and the Cipressa

Mathieu van der Poel won alone in 2023 after attacking near the top of the Poggio, 62 years after his grandfather Poulidor. In 2024 he brought back a late attack by Mohorič for his teammate Jasper Philipsen, who beat Michael Matthews in the sprint of a 12-rider group. It was the fastest edition on record, at more than 46 kilometers per hour.

In 2025 Tadej Pogačar attacked on the Cipressa with 25 kilometers to go, and only Van der Poel and Filippo Ganna could follow. Van der Poel held his wheel on the Poggio and won the three-rider sprint, with Ganna second and Pogačar third.

In 2026 Pogačar crashed in Imperia, 32 kilometers from the finish, and rejoined the peloton as the Cipressa began. He attacked there again, and this time Van der Poel and Tom Pidcock went with him. Van der Poel was dropped on the Poggio, and Pogačar beat Pidcock in a two-rider sprint on Via Roma. It was his sixth start, and the first win built on a Cipressa attack since Gabriele Colombo’s in 1996.

Sprinters, descenders and solo attackers have all won here. From 1997 to 2016 the winners included Erik Zabel, Mario Cipollini and Mark Cavendish. Since then Vincenzo Nibali has won from the Poggio, Matej Mohorič on its descent and Tadej Pogačar after an attack on the Cipressa.