61st Milan-San Remo 1970 (Italy)

Gallant Italian Ends a 17 Year Drought

Thursday, March 19, 1970 the 61st edition of “La Primavera” left the center of Milan and quickly entered the plains of Lombardia. The preme (cash prize) at Novi Ligure came at the 91km mark of the race and saw an elite group of 18 roll away from the peloton. They formed what would be the winning breakaway of the day. The group included Franco Bitossi, Roger De Vlaeminck, Eric Leman, Michele Dancelli, Walter Godefroot Rolf Wolfshohl, and Rik Van Looy.

The breakaway reached the climb of the Passo di Turchino at high speed. Franco Bitossi led the group over the summit and took the coveted Turchino preme. The breakaway started the descent with a 5 minute lead on the Eddy Merckx and his Faema team led peloton.

*Race profile courtesy of Internet site: www.econ-outlook.com.au/tom/cycling/palmares.html

As the race hit the Ligurian coast at the 155 km mark of the race the chasing peloton was single file and had the time gap down to 4 minutes.

After the preme sprint in Loano, won by his Molteni teammate Carlo Chiappano, Michele Dancelli broke away solo and made his bid to win the race with 70 long kilometers to go. The rest of the breakaway group seemed unconcerned about the young Dancelli.

The breakaway came to life on the climb of the Capo Berta with 30 km to go. Walter Godefroot attacked and followed by only Eric Leman. The effort cut the Dancelli’s lead to 2’30” with only 20 km remained.

Over the summit of the Poggio the inspired Dancelli realized the race was over with a 2’15” lead over the summit on a solo chaser Eric Leman. Michele Dancelli rolled down the "Via Roma" in San Remo to win Milan-San Remo and become the first Italian winner since Loretto Petrucci in 1953.

M-SR 1969

M-SR 1971

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