Welcome to San Marino to the 2024 Coppa Placci! You can watch the full race as a video here. Unfortunately, my laptop didn’t appreciate the combination of the replay and screen recording, so the framerate isn’t great. Other than that, feel free to give some feedback on the video in general.
Onto the race: Moscon is the bookies’ top favorite, but like many observers, they also rate those puncheurs with a good mountain stat highly.
The start is right at the Basilica San Marino, one of the highest points in the microstate.
Consequently, the start of the race is a long downhill stretch. It’s not the easiest terrain to ride away from the pack, but rookie De Comarmond is determined to try anyway.
Coming out of the downhill, he’s got just around a minute on the peloton, where five guys attack to join him at the front: Pszczolarski, Klyver - representing one of the two local teams -, Brown, another neo pro in Vinokurov, and Klahan.
More riders follow, including Van Vliet, Kipruto and De Bondt, all three of whom join the breakaway. Up ahead, only Klahan has managed to catch up with De Comarmond, they have 20 seconds on these others.
But they don’t stay on their own for long. All 11 riders named above then form the group of the day and they have 1’40 on the pack. Crucially, the second local team, Sauber, have not been able to put a man in the breakaway. Garofoli tries to rectify that, but he comes too late and the pack quickly brings him and his companions back.
Cervelo have the strongest presence at the front of the peloton with Moscon consistently in the first 20 or so positions. Hilcona for Eiking are also up there, no surprise, but then we also have some input from Duvel and Newton Foundation, who seem to fancy the chances of Lyu and Lopez, respectively. The gap to the breakaway peaked at 4’30 and is down to around 3 minutes roughly halfway through the race.
Riding across many short and steep hills in the final 40 kilometers, the peloton stretches and contracts again, splits appear consistently, but mostly close just as quickly. Zordan and Le Gac are among the stronger riders to be caught out of position at some point, but no damage done just yet. 1’30 for the breakaway with 27 kilometers to go.
10 kilometers later, the gap has come down another 30 seconds. De Bondt is pushing the pace in the breakaway to try to stay ahead longer, which forces first Vinokurov and then Pszczolarski off the back.
With the breakaway about to be caught, action begins in the peloton. Koretzky initiates the first attack, with Lyu, Barbero, Lopez and Raileanu following closely. Eiking is also trying to catch up, Moscon is positioned a bit further behind.
He makes the jump in time though and 22 riders, including some of the former breakaway riders, are off the front. Waeytens, Mager, Zordan, Nikiema and Govekar are among the more prominent names to miss the move.
But ultimately, that gap is closed again, and no less than 120 riders form the peloton heading into the final 7 kilometers. Nearing the penultimate short ramp, Beltran and Lafay try to force another selection, Conti follows.
This doesn’t immediately produce a gap, but the favorites are stretched incredibly thin. Behind the former three, in order, are Jensen, Lopez, Raileanu, Serrano, Paulus, Guerreiro, Nikiema, Lyu, Robov, Laas, and only then Bystrom, Moscon and Eiking.
But then just a few hundred meters later, a gap does open ahead of Moscon and Eiking. Schönberger and Rochas are with them, then 40 seconds to the next bigger group, which might be enough to knock those out of contention with 4km to go.
We’re at the foot of the final climb, 1.5 very steep kilometers. Moscon and Eiking, but not Schönberger and Rochas, closed the gap to make it a 15 rider “sprint” to the finish line. Raileanu leads the way with Jensen in his wheel.
Raileanu struggles mightily, and Jensen takes the lead under the flamme rouge. Serrano and Conti follow. Behind Paulus in 10th place, a gap opens once again, and once again, the top favorites are on the wrong side of it!
700 meters and it seems to be between these 10 riders. Jensen still leads, Guerreiro is now the closest challenger, then it’s Beltran, Lyu and Serrano.
Guerreiro takes the lead flanked by Jensen and Lyu, but Lopez is now the fastest and closing in quickly.
But into the final two corners, he stalls out a bit. This looks like a duel between Guerreiro and Lyu!
And Guerreiro takes it. A magnificent win for Würth! Lyu holds on to second place ahead of Lopez. Jensen ends up fourth after leading for much of the early part, while Beltran gets rewarded with fifth place for forcing the original selection in the first place.
Paulus, Conti and Lafay’s strong results – an unexpected one especially for the Italian – underscore the importance of climbing here once more.
With that said, Raileanu has to be a bit disappointed to end up only in 10th place, one behind Laas. Serrano follows in 11th place, then Eiking and Bystrom – more pronounced disappointments for those two, perhaps simply out of their depth with their comparatively poor climbing, but looking at Jensen, more should’ve still been possible. Rochas, who makes it two in the Top 15 for Euskotren, is 14th.
While not the strongest climber, Moscon still has no excuse to end up as far down as 15th. Unfortunately, that simply seems to come down to a poor day, as well as inattentive racing throughout the finale, which forced him to spend energy in all the wrong places.
Unfortunately, something went wrong with the export of the results. I was able to recreate the Top 30 from the video, very sorry about the rest.
Coppa Placci 
