Three decades on from his Milan-Sanremo victory of 1992, looking back on it now Sean Kelly describes it as one of the most important wins of his career.
When he got across to Moreno Argentin just after the Poggio he had a score to settle with him from five years earlier at the World Championships.
Kelly descended the famed final climb like a man possessed in 1992, with Argentin in his sights. When he caught him on the flat, with 1km to go, there was no way he was coming through to do a turn on the front.
“I was in good shape at the time but I wasn’t in the super
shape I had years earlier,” Kelly told stickybottle of going to the start line
of the 1992 Milan-Sanremo aged 34 years and in the autumn of his career.
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“I wasn’t talked about as a favourite that year and I said to myself before the Poggio came that year; ‘I’m with these guys, I feel really good but I have to be realistic, I have to sit there in that 15th position or so and just try and stay there’.
“Then Argentin attacked and you had a few others; (Steven)
Rooks, Jim Van De Laer and others. But I was still there and I was getting ever
so close to the top of the Poggio.
“Then when I we got to the final few hundred metres I
said to myself, ‘I’ve made it here to the top of the Poggio.’ Then I just moved
up and little and I hit it from there.”
'Hit it' he did; Kelly getting clear of the group deep into the descent, with 3km to go to the finish. He took significant risks down the climb; his now iconic descent filmed from the TV helicopter above. The Irishman gained all the way on lone leader Argentin; catching him with 1km to go, and with the group behind breathing down their necks.
Kelly waited and waited behind his Italian rival; saying he made sure Argentin saw he was tired. He also made sure the Italian had a clear view of the riders closing in behind every time he looked back in the hope it would encourage him to panic.
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“It was, I think, one of my best victories,” Kelly says
now. “I was written off in terms of winning the big monuments and I had left PDM
the previous year; they didn’t have the confidence I could win races any more. And
so I went to Festina.
“So to win Milan-Sanremo in a new team, the first year,
and at that point of my career… I knew my time was numbered at that stage to
win classics, though I did manage to win that one. And I felt it was one of my
best wins; it was. It was my last big one.”
While Argentin was disappointed and annoyed in the months and years that followed, Kelly said he has mellowed in more recent years when they have met.
“When I caught him at the bottom of the Poggio, and of
course it finished a bit earlier then, it didn’t go as far into Sanremo… from
the bottom of the Poggio it was just one kilometre to go.
“When I caught him he looked around and he was shocked
when he saw me coming up, he didn’t realise I was coming across. And then he
said to me ‘tirare’, which means ‘pull’.
“And I opened my mouth fully to show I was in oxygen
debt; I just started shaking my head and so he rode on. And then he kind of
slowed down again and he asked me to pull again.
“And I said that, no… And then he was looking around, so every time he looked around I just moved out of the way to make sure he could have a clear look at the group coming up behind.
"And then he kept riding at a good strong pace because I think he felt ‘maybe I can win in the sprint here, but at least I’m going to be 2nd, because if the group comes up I’ll get nothing out of it’.
“And so he did, he kept on, and then I beat him pretty comfortably in the sprint. If I had taken over from him when I caught him, and gone to the front, he would have done exactly the same to me; he’d have just sat on my wheel.”
Kelly (Festina) beat Argentin (Ariostea) by a couple of lengths and three seconds later Johan Museeuw (Mavic Lotto) won the sprint for 3rd from Uwe Raab (PDM), Scott Sunderland (TVM) and Olaf Ludwig (Panasonic).
“He always said ‘you should have shared the money with me’. And I said, ‘well, no way’. And that was immediately after it, in the same year; in Fleche Wallonne I spoke to him and at a few other races to. But then I met him a few years ago at the Giro and he said I’d taken one of the best possibilities of his career away from him.
“I said to him… well, at the World Championships when
Roche won in 1987 in Villach in Austria he sat on me for the last 1½ laps; I
mean, he never came out of my wheel. So I said to him ‘look, at the World
Championships you marked me out of it, so that was a bit of a get-you-back for
me’. And then we had a bit of a joke about it.”
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