9 OCTOBER
IL LOMBARDIA
ESTABLISHED 1905 EDITIONS 115
More than any other major one-day race, Il Lombardia tilts the playing field definitively towards the climbers.
The puncheurs and classics specialists can hope for a good result at Liège-Bastogne-Liège, the hilliest of the spring classics, but the climbs around Lake Como are too long and too hard for anybody except pure climbers. The winners in the last nine events -Joaquim Rodríguez, Dan Martin, Vincenzo Nibali, Esteban Chaves, Thibaut Pinot, Bauke Mollema and Jakob Fuglsang -have all finished in the upper reaches of the grand tours.