Sprinters foiled in a cold and wet bunch sprint by Kristoff

They build them tough in Norway, and tough you had to be to come out on top of this one. Indeed, even to survive to the final group of 25 took some doing on a day in which the Milan-San Remo course was battered with rain, wind and cold, and for almost 300 kilometres. The effort it took on the bodies of these athletes was never more evident that in the final sprint itself, for how many times do you see a bunch sprint containing names such as Mark Cavendish, Andre Greipel and Peter Sagan, and have a one-two-three finish of Alexanter Kristoff, Fabian Cancellara, and Ben Swift.

To look at the top three finishers alone without seeing the race itself would have left you thinking they had been part of a small group that had attacked before the finish and made the move stick, rather than a bunch sprint that contained some of the fastest men in the world. But in these conditions and with that many miles in pairs of legs further sapped by short-sharp climbs along the Ligurian coast road, it was the strongest, rather than the pure fastest, that had the best chance of winning.

And I wonder did Kristoff, the Norweigen hard man, know that? Did he know that in these conditions, at this pace and with this many hours in the saddle -- four minutes, four seconds shy of seven hours, to be exact -- that it would be the strongest who would win and that it wasn't necessary to try and lose the pure sprinters on the final climb up the Poggio?



Normally it is this climb where the decisive move would be made and while some tried, they couldn't open the gap required. Even on the wet descent some took a gamble on opening a gap, but when they merged back onto the main road into San Remo with the likes of Cavendish and Sagan still on board, it seemed everyone else's chances were doomed.

Not so. Kristoff, Cancellara and Swift left the last ditch attacking to the others and put their eggs in the tired-legs-of-sprinters basket, and for Kristoff, it paid out.

Cancellara looked angry when he crossed the line. How often will you beat those pure sprinters in a bunch gallop and still not win the race? He looked like a man who had just realised that someone else had the same plan as him, but who was just that little bit stronger on the day.

And a quick word for Vincenzo Nibali who crawled in 44th, 3 minutes and 14 seconds down, for it was him who made probably the best effort to leave the main group in a bid to win the race solo, and did so on the second to last climb of the Cipressa. The reigning Giro d'Italia winner surged clear and put in a masterful descent, catching the remaining two of a seven man group that had been off the front of the race for almost the entire day. He blew past them through the wet corners and took a 48 second lead onto the coast road with him. If only he could hit the Poggio with the majority of that in tact, we might have seen the first man to win from an attack on that climb since 1996, for Nibali's climbing ability coupled with his descending speed would surely have taken him onto the streets of San Remo alone. But the chase was on from the group behind and so Nibali only carried a handful of seconds onto the final climb and was soon swept away in a surge of attacks that themselves were not meant to last.

Results

1. Alexander Kristoff (Nor) Team Katusha, in 6h55'56"
2. Fabian Cancellara (Swi) Trek Factory Racing
3. Ben Swift (GBr) Team Sky
4. Juan Jose Lobato Del Valle (Spa) Movistar
5. Mark Cavendish (GBr) Omega Pharma - Quick-Step
6. Sonny Colbrelli (Ita) Bardiani CSF
7. Zdenek Stybar (Cze) Omega Pharma - Quick-Step
8. Sacha Modolo (Ita) Lampre-Merida
9. Gerald Ciolek (Ger) MTN - Qhubeka
10. Peter Sagan (Svk) Cannondale, all at s.t.