For 364 days of the year, Matt lives his regular life. But on one day, his finger hovers, ready to push this most important of buttons.
Many people argue that Milan-San Remo provides the best 15 minutes of racing of the entire season, as some of the best riders in the world climb the Poggio before hurtling down the other side of the climb for the finish line sprint.
This culmination comes after the contrasting preamble: hundreds of kilometres of mostly nothing-y build-up before the race eventually explodes into life. That creates a question that needs answering (if you’re not one of the true faithfuls who watches every single second of the seven-hour live broadcast): when should you tune in to the race?
With that in mind, a man called Matt came up with the idea for ismilansanremoexcitingyet.com, a website that simply answers that question with a yes or no.
What began as an attempt to earn some upvotes on Reddit nearly a decade ago has transformed into an expensive joke that has so far cost Matt £500 in total. Add to that the fact the race now has a women’s event and that means double the work. Oh, and on the day of this year’s Milan-San Remo, he’s supposed to be having people look around his home as he looks to sell his house, so he’ll have his laptop out in the park as he also tries to keep his two children entertained. It all sounds more difficult than hanging on to Tadej Pogačar’s back wheel up the Poggio.
If you tune in to images such as these, you’re already too late.
Jonny Long: Hi Matt! First off, how did you come up with the idea for the website? Do you remember the exact moment? When did it go live?
Matt: I remember there was a brief period where one-shot joke “single serving websites” were a thing. There’s a good blog post here from 2008 showing some of the classics (most of which aren’t working anymore), but I remember enjoying the childish pointlessness of a domain name that asked a question and then answered it on the page, like istwitterdown.com.
I registered ismilansanremoexcitingyet.com in March 2018 because of the ongoing cycling meme about the longest race of the season being quite dull to watch until the final 20 minutes.
JL: How long did it take to go from idea to it to being a functioning website?
Matt: Probably half an hour?! The page is as simple as it’s possible to be, and if I thought about it too much longer I probably would have decided not to do it. I really just wanted to get it live before that year’s race so I could spam it on the /r/peloton subreddit and reap the karma.
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