Five highlights from the season. First up is Milan-Sanremo, the fever dream of a Cipressa attack happened and the final half hour of the race felt like a trance.

Will Tadej Pogačar ever win Milan-Sanremo? He’s an obvious contender to win it but has done it five times now and not done better than third. Peter Sagan looked made for this race but never got it. Pogačar can win, he ought to win but it’s the subtlety and nuance that he might not that make it interesting.

It’s becoming a quest. If he had nonchalantly taken an edition already then he might prefer to skip it, talking of a boring race that is a 250km procession, of how it doesn’t offer him a challenge. But because it’s elusive and still just within his range he keeps returning. Many a rider does this, if you want to see Monaco-based pro out training the Poggio at the end of the morning and during lunchtime is as good a place as any.

This year’s race saw UAE come in with a plan to attack on the Cipressa and launch Pogačar away for the win. It was both the obvious thing to do and audacious. Expected as in this blog wrote a How to win Sanremo the week before suggesting just this move for UAE; brave because to pull it off is to abandon the settled consensus for the race. It’d been years since we’d even seen an attack on the Cipressa, decades since it had actually worked.

Pogačar launched and with the field strung out he had Filippo Ganna, Mathieu van der Poel and Romain Grégoire behind him and they tried to follow when nobody else could. Grégoire was soon dropped, then Ganna too but the big Italian used the balcony road over the top to get back.

On to the Poggio and Pogačar made several attacks. This distanced Ganna and set up a duel with the World Champion making more moves but each one was becoming less incisive and Van der Poel even made a counter move over the top.

Ganna got back in the streets of Sanremo and he packs a sprint to set up a frantic finish but it was Van der Poel that won again.

Why the highlight?
There hadn’t been an attack on the Cipressa for years and the last time one had worked was in 1996 so this alone makes it something worth celebrating. Watching it happen was entrancing, especially as we saw more moves on the Poggio. Plus it was more than a duel, Ganna playing an extra role as he chased with all he could.

There’s also the paradox of Pogačar not winning means we’re very likely to get more of the same again, he’ll start and with plans to attack from afar. So if it was a highlight of last season, next season’s edition is promising already.

If you’d been away from the sport and looked up the results to see Van der Poel and Pogačar share the Monuments you might think you did not miss much, all the races carved up between two riders. Sanremo showed that if the result was predictable, the path to victory can give a thrill.

Also Sanremo supplied action to the very end. In the Ronde, Roubaix, E3, Gent-Wevelgem and later in Lombardia we had a solo winner which left much to admire but meant viewers were able to know the winner from far out.

With hindsight
UAE got it wrong again. There’s no need to start the Cipressa in first place but they too far back and it cost energy to move up on the early slopes. In a race where every pedal stroke counts this was a penalty and, impossible to prove, had Pogačar gone into the climb better he might have had just that extra bit to go clear over the Cipressa. But would he want to with Van der Poel and Ganna chasing? Their presence helped keep the move away.

Alongside Van der Poel and Pogačar Ganna almost looked like an interloper but in the moment this all looked promising for him, second place in a race that did not really suit but it would be his best result in the spring.

Van der Poel and Pogačar seem to feed off each other, we saw this at the Tour de France too. To end this piece a fanciful suggestion: if UAE want to enable Pogačar to full the last few empty spots in his trophy cabinet then they could throw money at Van der Poel and hire him to help Pogačar in Sanremo and Roubaix. The Dutchman has a price and could be sprung out of his contract at Alpecin-Deceuninck and with Canyon too. Preposterous? Yes, of course but fun to mull for five minutes in December. So for now there are still some things that team budgets cannot buy.