The Monuments: Introduction
Anyone who knows me knows that I love cycling, and one of the many things I love about it is its endless variety. If you watch a game of football, you know that the pitch will be the same shape and the goal posts in the same place as they were in every other game you have ever watched. It seems a trivial point to make, but it does mean that the structure and character of each individual game will be roughly similar to that of every other game.
In cycling, on the other hand, no two races in a year have the same route, so every single time you watch a race you will see something new and different. Races absorb a great deal of character from the landscape they traverse: Belgian events wind and loop through narrow streets and cramped towns, Italian competitions dash up and down short sun-drenched hills in open countryside, Spanish courses roll through barren plains and ascend scorched mountains.
Beyond considerations of route, cycling races vary in their organisation, and fall in to two distinct categories: single-day events known as ‘classics’ and multi-day contests called ‘tours’ or ‘stage races’. The Tour de France, the most famous cycling event in the world, is obviously one of the latter: it takes place over three weeks and crowns an overall winner, as well as a best sprinter, best climber, best young rider, most aggressive rider and best team. Stage races are intensely tactical affairs, where teams and riders have to carefully ration their physical resources over a period of days or weeks. There is something for everyone: riders out of contention for the overall lead can chase stage wins, or compete for one of the lesser jerseys.
Much as I enjoy stage races, there is something particularly enthralling about the winner-takes-all nature of one-day classics. When there is no stage tomorrow for which to save energy, everyone rides full gas, and when there is no secondary contest to chase, everyone rides to be first across the line. Classics follow nearly the same route year after year, unlike stage races, so they have a deep connection to the history of the sport. History and tradition are very important in professional cycling, and knowing that legends once raced on the very same routes that are ridden today adds massively to the prestige of the great classics.
The five greatest one-day races in cycling are known as the ‘Monuments’, and they tower over the sport. They are five races so difficult and so different from one another that in the century since they started just three riders have won the complete set, and only the legendary Eddy Merckx has yet managed to win three in the same year. Riders will base an entire season of preparation around trying to win just one of them, and success is a career-defining moment for most. Hard-core fans consider winning a monument or two to be essential for a rider to be counted among the all-time greats.
The first monument of the season is raced tomorrow in Italy, 300 gruelling kilometres from Milan in the North to San Remo on the coast near the French border. I’ve decided to write something about the history and character of each of the five monuments as they hove in to view on the cycling calendar, so expect more words later in the week on Milan-San Remo and something about the next monument, the Tour of Flanders, in early April.
