Milano–Sanremo is the season's first great day, the race Italians call La Classicissima, or La Primavera. First run in 1907, it is the longest one-day race in the sport at 294km, and it is famous for doing almost nothing for six hours. The peloton drifts down the Ligurian coast intact until the Cipressa and the Poggio crack it open inside the final half-hour. That tension is the whole race. It is too hard for the pure sprinters to count on and too easy for the climbers to shake them, and it usually comes down to whoever dares most on the Poggio descent into the Via Roma. Eddy Merckx won it seven times and in nine starts never once finished off the podium, the record that still towers over the event. Tadej Pogačar, close for years, finally solved it in 2026.