Jasper Stuyven has won Milan-Sanremo after a brilliant racer's finish during which he took the finale on full-force and kept his nerve at the last.
The Belgian, riding for Trek-Segafredo, stayed in touch with the front of the race up the Poggio where the attacks came but did not rip the front apart like recent years.
Irish hopes were dashed when the in-form Sam Bennett punctured with 40km to go and was forced to chase alone for about 7km.
He made it up the Cipressa in the front group, as the peloton split, but drifted out of contention on the Poggio, perhaps because of a lingering issue with his bike or due to the impact of his chase back on.
We'll know more a little later and also have more on Nicolas Roche (Team DSM) and Ryan Mullen (Trek-Segafredo). In the end Bennett was only 29 seconds down on the winner, in 42nd place, with Roche in 115th and Mullen in 129th.
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Stuyven put in an opportunistic attack after the descent of the Poggio and though it looked like he would ride away over the final 2km, he seemed to tie up a little and Søren Kragh Andersen (Team DSM) bridged across to him.
Those two were just dangling off the front of the group behind in the final kilometre, with many of the big names in that chasing group including Wout van Aert, Mathieu van der Poel, Julian Alaphilippe, Caleb Ewan, Michael Matthews and others.
However, while the two leaders looked like they would be caught due to late attacks from the group behind, Kragh Andersen hit the front up ahead and rode for the finish line.
Stuyven kept his nerve - like Sean Kelly against Moreno Argentin in 1992 - and he waited and waited in Kragh Andersen's slipstream before launching the winning sprint with just over 100 metres to go.
The Belgian - regarded as the bike riders' bike rider - just about held on to win, with the sprint from the group behind swamping him right on the line but not taking the victory from him.
Ewan (Lotto Soudal), who put in an incredible ascent of the Poggio as Ineos Grenadiers set a very hard pace, won the sprint for 2nd place just ahead of last year's winner Van Aert (Jumbo Visma).
More to come.
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