'Winning is a dream' - Suspense builds for return of women's Milan-San Remo after 20 years

There’s not a rider on the start list of San Remo Women who raced in the last edition. Few will be old enough to remember it, some weren’t even born. It came in 2005, then called the Primavera Rosa, and was won by German rider Trixi Worrack. The race was cancelled the following year.

Now, two decades on from Worrack’s victory, the women’s peloton is returning to San Remo. The suspense has been building since the race’s comeback was announced last year.

“It’s a race I’ve really wanted to do since I heard it was going to happen this year,” said EF Education-Oatly’s Kristen Faulkner, the Olympic champion.

“In my cycling career, I came into the sport at a really interesting time because there have been a lot of firsts: the first Paris-Roubaix, the first modern Tour de France, the first modern Milano-Sanremo. Every year there’s some new race added to the calendar and it’s really exciting to be a woman in cycling because of that.”

At 10:35 local time on Saturday, the peloton will leave Genoa, and head west along the Italian Riviera. They’ll climb over the Tre Capi – the Capo Mele, Cervo and Berta – before tackling the ascents of the Cipressa and Poggio, as they did in 2005, mimicking the finale of the men’s race, one of cycling’s oldest and grandest events.

For the peloton’s Italian cyclists, the excitement carries an extra dimension: the chance to win a Monument on home soil. One of the hopefuls is Elisa Longo Borghini, who has already vowed that she and her UAE Team ADQ teammates will “give our best to try and win”.

“As an Italian and the Italian champion, it will be an honour for me to take part in this race, which has a unique charm,” Longo Borghini said. “San Remo is something special, part of cycling history, and I think racing it, tackling those legendary roads, will be an incredible experience for all of us.”

Those legendary roads are laid just a few hours’ drive from the hometown of Elisa Balsamo, the winner of the recent Trofeo Alfredo Binda, and one of the favourites for Milan-San Remo, should it come down to a sprint.

“I know the climbs and the roads quite well,” the former world champion smiled. “I already came here in December with Ilaria [Sanguineti] – she lives really close to San Remo, so she knows everything about these roads and she told me all the secrets.”

Balsamo has received advice, too, from her Lidl-Trek sports director, Ina-Yoko Teutenberg, who rode the Primavera Rosa in 2005. “She was riding with us today and yesterday,” Balsamo said. “She said she believes that we can survive the climbs.”

It’s the final two kickers – the Cipressa and Poggio – that the Italian believes will give the race its “big show”.

Still, some have wondered if the spectacle might be dampened a bit by the event’s length; the men’s race is famous for being the longest on the calendar, at almost 300km, while the new women’s race stretches out 156km, neither noteworthily long nor short.

“I don’t think the spectacle comes from having a longer race,” Balsamo said. “In my opinion, we shouldn’t confuse how interesting or hard a race is with its distance, because they’re separate things. A race can be really hard, but only be 140, 150, 160km. At the end of the day, it’s the riders who make the difference.”

The Italian now hopes that rider will be her. “Winning San Remo is a dream, I think, for everyone, but especially for an Italian rider,” she said. To do so, she’ll have to hold off the likes of Demi Vollering (FDJ-Suez), Kasia Niewiadoma (Canyon-SRAM zondacrypto) and the world champion, Lotte Kopecky (SD Worx-Protime).

Twenty years on, who will be the next Worrack? We'll find out in San Remo, around 2:30pm local time on Saturday.