Classics Monuments II

Beauty and The Beast.

By Black Sheep Cycling

May 9^th, 2022

What is beauty? The peloton snaking its way down the Ligurian coast in March sunshine. Chancers launching it over the Poggio, daredevils plunging back towards the Mediterranean and sprinters playing the ultimate game of Brinksmanship on the via Roma? Or is it the rouleurs of the North grinding over cobbled bergs, wiping the mud from their eyes and bracing from the winds whipping across the Flemish plains on a grizzly grey day in April?

We think both in equal measure. These are the Monuments, bringing the effervescent colours of the pro peloton with them. This capsule celebrates the rich history of those races, the technicolour celebration of cycling they embody and the energy they imbue when they pass through.

Last year Paris Roubaix and Flèche Wallone got the Black Sheep treatment. This year we tip our cycling caps to two more, Milan–San Remo and Tour of Flanders.

Welcome Classics Monuments II. Watch them for one day, live them all year long.

Milan-San Remo

Starting under often grey, cold, gloomy skies outside Il Duomo, the peloton begin their day. The calm morning roll out belies what’s ahead. Milanisti begin their weekend, tourists are still in bed, Gazzetas remain neatly folded. Fair play, given that before the day is done, they’ll have clocked up nearly 300km.

This race is tranquil until it’s not. Several hours of Vivaldi followed by an hour of thrash metal, played out with the backdrop of a bright and breezy Mediterranean, in the March sun. The rolling coastal road. Crescendo. A blink of an eye and it’s the Poggio climb. Ignition. A game of he who dares sometimes wins. So fast they brake on uphill bends. Long enough for a puncheur, short enough for a sprinter. The electrifying express elevator back towards the sea, where fortune favours the brave, the very brave. Onto the Via Roma, the heart of San-Remo, for some 60km/h poker. How late do you leave it, which wheel do you follow, which side of the road do you pick? La Clasicissima, where the Classics spring into life.

Flanders

De Ronde Van Vlaanderen, or as locals call it, just De Ronde. Because for them, there’s only one Tour. How’s about a game of 3D chess up, down, left and right along some of the narrowest, steepest and most cobbled-est of Flemish roads? Flanders, like chess, is a game of strategy.

It’s also alchemy of the mind and body. It’s about knowing every inch of road, where to wait, where to go, knowing exactly which inch of tarmac (or pavement) ((or dirt)) (((or cobblestone))) to be on, at the exact second you need to be on it.

If you know, you know. And that’s just working out the best way to watch multiple sections from the side of the road, along with a million other screaming fans, double-digit ale in hand.

For the men and women racing, it’s low cadence churning and gurning, a race often decided one by one out the back rather than decisively out front. It’s an elemental, brutal and deeply physical beast. The elastic will break, but when? Because that’s Checkmate.