La Primavera

   Italian for “spring”, La Primavera is the nickname of Milano-San Remo, the first of pro cycling’s monument races. Because of its relatively flat profile, the race is also nicknamed the “Sprinters’ Classic”. At 298 km, Milano-San Remo is the longest single-day professional race on the UCI calendar.

   Because the teams with a top-level sprinter will rarely let a significant attack go, the race is usually a bit of a snooze until there are about 35 km to go. From there it becomes a frenetic series of attacks and counterattacks, leading to the last two significant climbs over the Cipressa and Poggio.
   Despite its reputation as one for the sprinters, teams with a fastman sometimes get the strategy all wrong. Five of the last six races have ended in a winning break of three or fewer riders. Last year Matej Mohoric split from the field with a hair-raising decent of the Poggio, during which he nearly crashed twice, and perhaps discouraged anyone from following too closely.
   The 2018 win by Vincenzo Nibali (intro photo) was one of the most exciting race finishes ever seen, particularly if you were, like me, a fan of the Italian legend. Nibali attacked over the top of the Poggio, opened a nice gap with his superior descending skills and narrowly held off a hard-charging pack of sprinters at the line.
   In honor of the Italian Classic, I’ve built up this Bianchi Trofeo bicycle. As mentioned previously, my friend Bruce is no longer taking on paint jobs, so I’ll have to wait for warmer weather to move my own paintworks outdoors. The need to move the Battaglin Speed AE project to the temporary backburner has led to this logical rearrangement of my build queue.

   While I've decided to hold off on the purchase of any new frames for future assembly until I can move out some of my current stock of finished bicycles, I have been stockpiling some groupsets. It seems they are becoming harder to find in decent shape and at a reasonable price, so when I can find something worthy of purchase, I snap it up!

   I had a really nice Campagnolo Athena 8-speed group on my shelf, an appropriate celeste-colored Selle Italia saddle and set of ITM bars and stem that happened to have Bianchi logos! I always have some wheels ready to go - in this case, a set featuring Mavic rims and Campagnolo hubs - so this build project came to completion in just a couple of days.