Blazin' Saddles: Are bunch sprints a thing of the past in Milano-Sanremo?

After what was calculated as the second fastest ascent of the Poggio on record, it was perhaps no surprise that the pure sprinters were unable to join the party on the Via Roma as the French man-of-the-moment (riding for the indisputable team-of-the-moment) won a maiden Milano-Sanremo and Monument from a select group of 11 riders.

Twenty-seven seconds later, a chasing pack arrived containing the likes of the 2014 winner Alexander Kristoff, his UAE-Team Emirates team-mate Fernando Gaviria, the in-form Magnus Cort (Astana), the 2015 champion John Degenkolb (Trek-Segafredo) and Caleb Ewan of Lotto Soudal, the rider who led home the peloton in Vincenzo Nibali's wake 12 months previously.

Exactly one minute later, four Deceuninck-QuickStep riders crossed the finish in a celebratory line: Zdenek Stybar and Philippe Gilbert – the riders whose savage pace-setting had blown apart the pack on the early phase of the Poggio; the Belgian national champion Yves Lampaert, who'd worked hard on the approach; and the Italian champion Elia Viviani, the team's option had the race come down to a sprint.

It says a lot about the way Milano-Sanremo seems to be ridden nowadays that the fast legs of the in-form Viviani were not called on. For a third year running it was a case of the puncheurs killing the sprinters in what had always been known as the sprinters' classic.

Among the select riders Alaphilippe got the better of at the finish were Poland's Michal Kwiatkowski and the former triple world champion Peter Sagan – the two riders who pushed him out to third place in his Milano-Sanremo debut two years ago, when Team Sky's Kwiatkowski took the spoils.

It was that man Kwiatkowski who led the leading group of seven riders over the summit of the Poggio some 5.5km from the finish on Saturday – with Bora-Hansgrohe's Sagan, Matteo Trentin (Mitchelton-Scott), Oli Naesen (Ag2R-La Mondiale), Alejandro Valverde (Movistar), Wout Van Aert (Jumbo-Visma) and Alaphilippe following in that order.

Kwiatkowski, who now has the new Strava KOM on the climb, stopped the clock at 5min 50secs: four seconds slower than Laurent Jalabert's infamous record ascent in 1995 and five seconds faster than 2017 when the Pole went over the top with Sagan and Alaphilippe.

Gazzetta, the Italian sports newspaper, even timed the ascent at a generous 5'37", making it the fastest in history and causing an inevitable hoo-ha on social media. Fast times – nay, record times – in a period of supposed doping austerity just don't add up for many of the sceptics.

And this being cycling, with its long history of cheating and skulduggery, the views of the sceptics and critics cannot be ignored. But try telling anyone with a straight face that clear technological advancements in bikes and equipment have not been made in the sport over the past two decades.

What's more, there is always a context to every climb and to every race.

On Saturday's ascent of the Poggio there was a reported tailwind assisting the riders. We also saw a situation quite rare in what is usually a mano-a-mano tussle: three riders from the same team throwing down the hammer on the front, with Messrs Stybar and Gilbert giving it their all for Alaphilippe to shred the pack and ditch the dangermen.

Sure, that tactic means sacrificing the chances of their man Viviani, but it worked: already dropped on the Cipressa, Dylan Groenewegen of Jumbo-Visma was further distanced, while former bunch sprint winners Kristoff, Degenkolb and Demare also dropped back, along with the likes of Ewan, Nacer Bouhanni (Cofidis), Sonny Colbrelli (Bahrain Merida) and Greg Van Avermaet (CCC Team).

In fairness, the bullish Degenkolb almost managed to fight back into contention on the descent along with Michael Matthews of Team Sunweb, but saw his chances scuppered with a cruel mechanical just as contact was being made.

The ascent of the Poggio also has a larger context within the race. If Saturday's leading ascent was just four seconds slower than the 1995 record set by Jalabert and Maurizio Fondriest, and five seconds quicker than in 2017, the preceding climb of the Cipressa was 54 seconds slower than its 1996 record and 36 seconds slower than in 2017.

In fact, Saturday's 110th edition of Milano-Sanremo had a 96% completion rate with only seven riders dropping out: another indication, perhaps, that it was not raced too strenuously before the decisive climb of the Poggio.

For all his team's tactical bullishness late in the race, Alaphilippe had the luxury of keeping quiet near the back of the peloton for large parts of the 291-kilometre race while team-mate Tim Declercq, QuickStep's designated breakaway-hunter extraordinaire, did his stuff on the front, monitoring the situation and contributing to the chase.

Indeed, until the final decisive climb, the only rider throwing caution to the wind – and his body almost to the rocks – was local boy Niccolo Bonifazio of Direct Energie, who attacked on the descent of the Cipressa before building up a lead of 22 seconds after a dare-devil display of downhill riding.

Bonifazio's trade? He's a sprinter who finished fifth in his maiden Sanremo four years ago when Degenkolb won the bunch finale.

That a sprinter feels obliged to attack 20km from the finish suggests he's either not too assured of his sprinting skills – or not too confident that he'll get the chance to even put them to the test.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, sums up the modern day Milano-Sanremo for you.

Since the turn of the century, 11 editions have been decided in a bunch sprint, eight from a move that came on the Poggio, and just the once from a late attack on the approach to the line.

But since we had three editions in succession won from mass sprints – Kristoff in 2014, Degenkolb in 2015 and Demare in 2016 – the winning move has always come on the final climb. It seems that riders have sussed out that, today, with the kind of riders there are in the pack – the Alaphilippes, the Kwiatkowskis, the Sagans – this is the only way Milano-Sanremo can be won.

In such a world, a rider who can both climb and sprint is king. Which is why it should perhaps come as no surprise that Alaphilippe became the fourth rider in history to win Sanremo as reigning polka-dot jersey winner of the Tour de France.

While victories on the cobbles may be beyond him, Alaphilippe's skill set and strength suggests he should be able to add monumental wins at Liege-Bastogne-Liege and Il Lombardia to his collection – races which he has already finished runner-up in before.

As for Milano-Sanremo, as long as there are riders of Alaphilippe's calibre, it seems hard to envisage a scenario where the likes of Ewan, Gaviria, Viviani, Groenewegen, Sam Bennett and the other pure sprinters will have a chance to win the one Monument which has traditionally been seen as a concession to their own skill set.

A lot of noise was made about Ewan's chances this year after the Australian finished runner-up last year and showed his ability to sprint uphill on the Hatta Dam in the Tour of Oman last month. But the Poggio is a different beast than a small, steep wall in the Arabian Peninsula – especially when you have two experienced team-mates to set you up.

"You could kind of feel it was going to be hard in the final because it was super easy up the Cipressa,” Ewan told Cyclingnews.

"That made for an aggressive Poggio, and the strongest guys up there went full gas. It was hard for me to follow and I was also a little too far back, so I wasn’t where I needed to be when the split happened. But to be honest, I think it would have been too hard for me too.

In the years to come, it will be the jobs of Ewan, Gaviria et al to keep the deficit to a minimum going over the Poggio in order to keep their dreams alive of victory on the Via Roma.

But even then, Alaphilippe showed in Tirreno-Adriatico that he can beat the fast men in a bunch sprint on his day, too. And if the Frenchman doesn't, Deceuninck-QuickStep could always rely on Viviani…