Ranking the Monuments - my personal preferences

Every Momunent is interesting. But every Monument is interesting on a different level. 

Eddy Merckx leading a bunch of cyclists on the cobbles of the famous Paris-Roubaix

Here are my personal prefeences from the "less" to the most interesting ones. 

5. Liége-Bastogne-Liège

For many years the date of Liége-Bastogne-Liège collided with the Budapest Book Festival, an important event for me when I was working as cultural journalist. Thus slowly but surely this one became my less favoutite Monument. Undeserved, of course, because it was not its fault. 

Nevertheless, there is a dynamics, or bettee tk say, an arc of the story of the spring classics every year, I consider Paris-Roubaix the peak of it, thus it seems hard to invest to the Ardennes Classics emotionally. 

4. Il Lombardia 


It's similar with Il Lombardia (or with its traditional name Giro di Lombardia), which is often overlooked because it takes place in October. The older of the two Italian Monuments (the first edition was held in 1905, while the other one, Milano-Sanremo was born in 1907.)

It's a shame that the event gets little attention from me, the few editions I can recall were really enjoyable. 

3. Milano-Sanremo


Actually, I was thinking I change the order of these two and put rather Il Lombardia forward, but there is one important reason why La Classicisima deserves the 3rd place in my little ranking. 

It's the earliest of the 5 monuments. Although it's generally considered a boring race for cca 270 km long, it still marks of the real start (sorry for the cobbled classics earlier in the calendar) of the spring classics season. 

On the other hand, there is this witty remark about one-day races are like thrillers which is an apt decription of Milano-Sanremo. Yes, for cca 270 km there is nothing but slowly building suspence, then the finale sometimes is just firework. 

2. Ronde van Vlaanderen

If I would write this post few days before Ronde van Vlaanderen, I would put this Monument in the fist place. It hits somehow different during those day, otherwise Paris-Roubaix keeps his position for the rest of the year. 

The youngest of the five Monuments (the first edition was held in 1913) has cobbles too like its bigger sister, Paris-Roubaix one week later, but the structure of the program, therefore the dynamics works differently. 

1. Paris-Roubaix

I used to say, this is my favourite one, but I'm not so sure about it anymore. Neveetheless, the historical significance of Paris-Roubaix is enormous, it's a great topic to talk about it when it comes to the broader context of road cycling history. 





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