Italian races bring an exciting new start to Classics season on SBS

SBS will bring a smorgasbord of one-day classics cycling to Australian audiences in the European spring starting with Strade Bianche men’s and women’s races and encompassing the monuments of Milan-Sanremo, Tour of Flanders, Paris-Roubaix and Liege-Bastogne-Liege.

The addition of Strade Bianche and Milan-Sanremo will mark the first time since 2016 that the races have been broadcast on SBS.

Milan-Sanremo is a monument with a rich history for Australians, with Matt Goss (2011) and Simon Gerrans (2012) both winning the race and Stuart O’Grady (2004), Allan Davis (2007), Michael Matthews (2015, 2020) and Caleb Ewan (2018, 2021) all finishing on the podium.

The race is regarded as the monument for the sprinters, though the course has lent itself to late breakaways in recent years, with lone riders triumphing in the last three editions.

The race still attracts the cream of the top crop of sprinters, and will do so again in 2024, with Jasper Philipsen, Caleb Ewan, Biniam Girmay, Mads Pedersen and Arnaud De Lie all on the provisional start list.

Strade Bianche, referred to as the ‘unofficial sixth monument’, is a dynamic race with growing prestige within the cycling world, with the white roads of Tuscany for which the race is named giving a distinctive character to the event.

Men’s and Women’s winners generally come from the classics specialists and climbers, with climbers like Megan Guarnier and Tadej Pogacar, and classics riders like Chantal van den Broeck-Blaak and Fabian Cancellara all winning and demonstrating the difference in potential victors in Siena.

SBS will continue to show the pick of the action from the cobbled classics and the Ardennes as well, with the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix the jewels of the cobbled races in Belgium and northern France respectively. Then the racing switches to the Ardennes, with Amstel Gold Race, Fleche Wallonne and Liege-Bastogne-Liege all captivating events with some of the best-known set pieces in cycling.

The classics season ends with men’s teams at Eschborn-Frankfurt, the German classic, or ‘Radklassiker’, an underrated event that saw a fascinating finish last season with a long-range attack holding off the sprinters’ teams in the peloton, seeing Soren Kragh Andersen take the victory.

How to watch the Classics races of the 2024 cycling season on SBS

Watch all the best cycling events in the world on SBS On Demand, with the Tour de France, Tour de France Femmes and much more.