Milan San Remo.

Three words enough to instil a sense of awe into a cycling fan, trepidation into a professional cyclist, and pure unadulterated longing into heroes of the cycling world, like Philippe Gilbert.

Two hundred and ninety eight kilometres long, containing the ascents of the Passo del Turchino, La Coletta, Piani di Invrea, and Capos Mele, Cervo and Berta before we hit the finale which every fan waits for year after year. The Cipressa, with 27 kilometres left to run sees the first main selection occur before the Poggio (di Sanremo) really drives the nail into the coffin.

But why waffle on about a course that remains largely un changed from season to season when I could be explaining the truly exciting aspect of this year’s Milan San Remo, and what it offers to YOU the eager PCM Daily Punter.

Read on to learn what’s new in your Betting World.

This season’s Milan San Remo will not just allow you to bet on one rider, from a favourites list, but will, in fact, allow you to bet on one favourite, one sprinter, one puncheur, one rouleur and one complete outsider. Not only does this mean that you get more fun from your dollars, but it means you can cover many different potential outcomes to this season’s race.

So, how does this work?

As many of you will be aware, many of the bets that go up allow you, the punter, to put your money on the sometimes safe option of “Another Rider”. In our series of bets for Milan San Remo, the use of “Another Rider” will imply that no-one from that particular list won, but another rider from another list will have. Obviously out of the five lists, four will have “Another Rider” as the winner, while only one will have the actual winner.

If you do, in fact, want to back a rider not offered up for selection, maybe Arthur Vichot or Frederik Veuchelen, then you’ll want to scan down the Outsider list and select the “Complete Outsider” option. You’ll notice that for these series of bets, because the options to bet on a wider range of riders are available, the “Complete Outsider” option is at high odds (low chance of success in other words).

The “Another Rider” option in all five lists will have odds at 1.00. This allows me to close the bets after Milan San Remo has run. It also means that should you feel silly enough to bid on it, and win, you get your money back. If you lose on that list, well, that’ll teach you for being foolish won’t it?

Hopefully this is clear enough to understand, but if you should feel the need to ask any questions, either comment on this News Article, or post in our Road Betting 2012 Thread.