ANALYSIS | The greatest moments in the history of Il Lombardia

It’s finally team for Il Lombardia, the final Monument of the cycling year. It arrives when the air is thinner, the leaves turn, and fatigue hangs on every wheel. Yet somehow, the race still produces some of the most emotional, chaotic, and transcendent moments in the sport. Across more than a century, it has offered a stage for redemption and occasionally pure poetry as the season comes to an end. Five editions, in particular, capture everything that makes Lombardia not just a Classic, but the closing statement of the season. So before the first pedal strokes are turned today, lets take a look at some of the best editions of Il Lombardia to date.

The story begins in 1946, the first race after the Second World War. Italy was rebuilding, and Fausto Coppi, still only twenty-seven, stood as a symbol of that restoration. That autumn, on the 231 kilometre course from Milan, he attacked on the Madonna del Ghisallo climb, then again on the Ghisolfa bridge, and arrived alone at the Vigorelli velodrome forty seconds clear.

It was the start of a dynasty. He would go on to win Lombardia four years in succession, from 1946 to 1949, inaugurating the legend of the Campionissimo. In a sport emerging from scarcity and ruin, Coppi’s attack was interpreted not merely as an athletic gesture but as national catharsis. Lombardia had found its identity: a stage for renewal, set against dying light.

Eight years later, Coppi returned for what would become his fifth and final triumph. The 1954 edition did not deliver the sweeping solo of earlier years. Instead, it demanded patience and guile. His great rival Fiorenzo Magni was in the mix, and for once Coppi had to gamble on timing rather than supremacy.

In the closing kilometres, the two Italians marked each other so tightly that even the crowd in the Milan velodrome couldn’t predict the outcome. Coppi found a narrow corridor in the sprint, edged ahead of Magni, and sealed a record-extending fifth victory, still unmatched today (although Tadej Pogacar can do so today).

By then Coppi’s private life had turned into national scandal, his health was fading, and the great duels with Bartali were history. Lombardia 1954 became his last moment of total command. It closed one of cycling’s golden eras and set a benchmark that every modern champion, from Merckx to Pogacar, has quietly measured himself against.

Two years later, the race wrote one of its strangest, most human chapters. The 1956 edition is remembered less for the name of the winner, André Darrigade, than for the theatre that unfolded on the road. Coppi attacked the Ghisallo, trailed by Diego Ronchini. Behind them, Magni missed the move and, legend has it, was overtaken on the road by a car carrying Giulia Occhini, the “Dama Bianca,” Coppi’s lover and one of the most controversial figures in post-war Italian sport. Her glance, or perhaps her laughter, lit a fire in Magni.

Consumed by fury, he launched a one-man pursuit, bridging the gap almost by willpower alone. For a few kilometres he appeared to have broken Coppi, until Darrigade, perfectly timed, surged past both to steal the win. It was a melodrama worthy of Italian cinema, passion, rivalry, betrayal, and the fine line between vengeance and exhaustion. Lombardia, again, had proved itself the most emotional of Monuments: a race where heart often trumps logic.

Fast-forward half a century, and the rain returned to reclaim its role as antagonist. The 2010 edition unspooled under leaden skies, the roads slick and treacherous. Philippe Gilbert, already emerging as a master of the autumn calendar, broke away with Michele Scarponi on the slopes above Lake Como.

On the final climb, San Fermo della Battaglia, Gilbert attacked, carved the descent alone, and crossed the finish soaked and trembling. Behind him the descent resembled a battlefield, riders sliding across painted lines, dreams ended in a heartbeat. Two years later the script flipped, when Gilbert, then world champion, crashed out himself on those same wet roads.

Then comes 2024, the edition that already sits alongside the Coppi vintages in cycling folklore. Tadej Pogacar, wearing his world champion’s stripes, attacked on the Colma di Sormano with forty-eight kilometres still to race. It was an audacious move, but not exactly surprising for him: long before the final climbs, before the television helicopters had even settled.

But from that moment, he was gone. Evenepoel, the reigning time-trial world champion and double Olympic champion, tried to chase and watched the gap grow to over three minutes. By the time Pogacar reached Como, the sun had dipped and the margin had become the largest since Merckx in 1971.

“Every victory is special,” Pogacar said that evening, “and today also, because the team worked so hard all year for all the victories that we achieved, and today is no different.” Can Pogacar repeat the feat today?

Five races, five eras, and yet a single pulse runs through them. Lombardia rewards the solitary artist. The climber who dares early, the descender who refuses to brake, the romantic who rides on emotion, they are the ones history remembers.

There is a thematic pattern, too. Coppi’s wins framed the race as a post-war resurrection; Magni’s revenge turned it into melodrama; Gilbert’s storm and Pogacar’s solitude recast it as elemental struggle. Always, the race reflects the character of its champion. Unlike the spring Monuments, where the cobbles and cold forge collective battles, Lombardia isolates its protagonists. It feels intimate, a duel between body and fatigue, will and gravity.

Arriving at the tail end of the season, it serves as cycling’s final confession. Riders carry months of form and failure into it: those who have won Grand Tours come seeking closure, those who have missed everything else come hunting redemption. It is the last chance before winter to turn a year into a story worth remembering.

Its history also makes it uniquely elastic. The race has changed start and finish towns repeatedly, Milan, Como, Bergamo, yet the essence remains intact. Each route variation rearranges the same vocabulary of climbs and lakes, of solitude and fatigue.

It’s also the Monument that best fuses Grand Tour strength with Classic aggression. Milano-Sanremo favours puncheurs; Roubaix and Flanders belong to the strongmen; Liège to the climbers who can sprint. Lombardia asks for all of them at once, the capacity to go long, the technique to descend, the nerve to attack early. That hybrid nature explains why so many Grand Tour winners have excelled here.

Every October, as the peloton winds through Lombardy’s chestnut forests and across the Ghisallo chapel’s steps, there’s a sense of ritual. Fans lining the road don’t just cheer the current contenders; they salute the ghost and legends of the past. The question is will Pogacar join Coppi today?