As expected, UAE Team Emirates did the bulk of the work to make Milano-Sanremo a puncheur oriented race today, and they did a good job. Tadej Pogacar took advantage of that work, however couldn't make the difference in the end, he went on to finish fifth in Sanremo.
“I’m happy: we showed a great team performance, racing proactively. Congratulations to my teammates and congratulations to Matej Mohoric, he deserved the victory: before the race, he told me not to try to follow him downhill and I replied that I was aware that it would be very difficult to follow him, since I know that he is crazy when the road goes down and also having noticed that he had a seat post dropper to launch even better," Pogacar said in a post-race interview.
As the peloton entered Cipressa the UAE Team Emirates block detonated the race, with Jan Polanc and Davide Formolo shedding the peloton down to less than 25 riders, who would end up fighting for the race win. Formolo, and later Diego Ulissi did a great chunk of pacing to setup the Slovenian's attack on the Poggio, however his aggressive stance didn't prove to be successful as there was always someone able to follow and the gradients weren't high enough to split the group.
Pogacar was the only rider capable of following the attack of Soren Kragh Andersen in the final ramps of the Poggio and entered the descent well positioned, however Matej Mohoric came around and made his move on the descent: "In fact, when he overtook me downhill, I saw that he was already taking big risks, drifting and even coming off the road, so I didn’t dare follow him."
"What we have done today as a team is an excellent sign for the next races and for the Milan-Sanremo editions that we will race in the next few years. It was a very fun Classic," Pogacar added.
"Now three days of rest await me, then I’ll start preparing my next appointments," he concluded. Pogacar has had a wildly successful start to the season, and his next races will be Dwars door Vlaanderen and Tour des Flandres where he will be testing himself in the cobbled roads of Belgium.
We gave it a good shot! 'La Primavera' was a nice race but I'm glad every stage is not 300km like today 😅😂 Thanks to my teammates who gave it everything and congrats to my compatriot @matmohoric on the win. Now time for a rest before the next races !
