Mads Pedersen was hugely disappointed after seeing a chance of a Milan-San Remo victory ahead of him on the via Roma for a split second, only for Jasper Philipsen to snatch it from him in the final metres of the high-speed 12-rider sprint.
Lidl-Trek had executed their planned race strategy, with Pedersen and Jasper Stuyven in the select group over the top of the Poggio. The thousand different scenarios that Stuyven had talked about pre-race then came down to a sprint after Mathieu van der Poel closed down the late attacks.
