All the talk of GreenEDGE not being good enough to achieve individual wins ended on the weekend with Simon Gerrans’s glorious but unexpected win in Milan-San Remo.
The Australian latched onto an attack by Vincenzo Nibali on the famous Poggio climb 10km out from the finish, before holding Fabian Cancellara’s wheel on the fast descent towards the Italian Riviera.
With the chasing pack closing in, the canny 31-year-old then passed his Swiss rival on the final straight to win his first of cycling’s ‘monument’ one-day classics.
Gerrans’s victory in San Remo follows his overall win in January’s Tour Down Under and GreenEDGE’s team time trial scalp in the recent Tirreno-Adriatico race in Italy.
Winning ‘La Classicissima’ – at a gruelling 298km, the longest of cycling’s five monuments – is arguably the biggest achievement of Gerrans’s illustrious career, which also includes stage victories in each of cycling’s Grand Tours.
But still there were people ready to stick the knives in as Gerrans mounted the podium – primarily because the man to his right, Cancellara, was seen as strongest rider on the day.
It was Cancellara whose kamikaze descending skills saw the leading trio’s advantage increase from a precarious four seconds over the summit of the Poggio to a decisive 12 seconds on the outskirts of San Remo; and it was Cancellara’s time trialling ability which saw the trio (in which Nibali was, by this stage, a mere spectator) preserve their slender lead despite the pursuing onslaught.
And yet Gerrans was the fastest in the sprint: having sat in Cancellara’s wheel (with the exception of one short pull on the front) for the entire final five kilometres, the Australian zipped clear of the man they call Spartacus inside the last 100m to take the win.
Foul play or ingenious racing? You decide.
For Cancellara, this latest pyrrhic victory was a case of deja-vu: the RadioShack-Nissan engine was second in Milan-San Remo last year, third in the Tour of Flanders, second in Paris-Roubaix.
A pattern in which Cancellara is clearly the strongest rider and yet ends up with the scraps on the podium is clearly emerging.
“Without question Fabian was the strongest, I can’t deny him that. He was going like a motorbike,” Gerrans said in the post-race press conference.
“Really, he followed Nibali and myself on the Poggio and then he drove it across the top. He’s one of the best descenders in the peloton and he drove it down the descent.
“I was losing the wheel coming out of the corners each time.
“It’s not always the strongest guy who wins the race. You have to play a little smart and be there.”
The truth is rarely in black and white – as Gerrans alluded to in his words. You see, Cancellara may have been the strongest – but this was something Gerrans was 100 percent conscious of, and as such he had to go about riding his race accordingly.
Besides, it was Nibali who launched the initial attack and Gerrans who had enough power to follow his wheel.
Cancellara joined them moments later – but not once did Cancellara drive the pace when the road was heading upwards; he was preserving his energy for his own speciality: the downhill.
Downhills are usually where Nibali comes into his own, but the Italian’s effort on Saturday was somewhat subdued for his usual high-standards. This was primarily owing to the fact that the gap back to the peloton was not huge, and Liquigas’s trump card for a sprint finish was the outrageously talented Peter Sagan.
This peculiar scenario was borne out by Sagan easily taking the sprint for fourth place just moments (not even a second according to the official race times) after the leading trio crossed the line. (The Slovak’s strong finish will have Liquigas thinking they really made a hash of their tactics – but that is another story entirely.)
All this goes to show that the conclusion of Milan-San Remo was more than a case of Gerrans piggybacking Cancellara for victory while a confused Nibali resigned himself for third.
The intricacies were huge and what spectators may have seen on the surface must not take anything away from Gerrans’s superb and opportune win.
“I’m pretty good at analysing the situation and making the most of what I have,” Gerrans explained when a journalist alluded that his win had been a stolen one.
“I know I’m not the biggest engine in the peloton, but I have some all round abilities and every now and then I get to race for the win and I try and make the most of that situation.”
With a track record as good as Gerrans’s, it’s a tactic that is definitely paying off.
And with GreenEDGE breaking their duck, confidence inside the Australian team will be sky high as the Belgian classics season approaches.
A team seemingly built for the tough one-day races around the cobbles of Flanders and northern France, GreenEDGE will be hoping they can prove the Gerrans’s win was far from a fluke.
The team deserve to be praised for how they went about racing Milan-San Remo. Entering the race, Matt Goss, as defending champion, was clearly Plan A.
But when the sprinter started to tire on the Cipressa climb and then the Poggio, Gerrans had the gumption to go to Plan B and pull it off.
I’ve already mentioned the ham-fisted nature in which Liquigas went about handling their own Plan A and B, and when another team more illustrious team, Sky, saw their Plan A in Mark Cavendish go up in smoke on the tough La Manie climb just under 100km from the finish, the British team – incidentally Gerrans’s old home – were unable to deliver with their Plan B, with Edvald Boasson Hagen finishing 20 seconds off the pace.
So hats off to Gerrans and to GreenEDGE – worthy winners in my eyes.
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