The Power Fingerprints of the Five Monuments: Why No Single Rider Can Master Them All

Five Races, Five Completely Different Bodies

Classics are often lumped together by outsiders as “one-day races,” but the physiological demands of the five Monuments differ so greatly that they are almost five different sports. Riders who can win three or more of them are rare in any generation—this is not luck, but because the power fingerprints are fundamentally incompatible.

Physiological Demand Comparison of the Five Monuments

Milan-San Remo: How Much Is Left After Six Hours

San Remo is nearly 290 km, with the vast majority spent at low-intensity rolling. The race is truly condensed into the final Cipressa and Poggio. It does not test peak power, but rather the residual explosiveness and descending courage to “still sprint after six hours of work.” This is why neither pure climbers nor pure sprinters easily win here.

Paris-Roubaix: The Ability to Deliver Watts into the Cobbles

The key to Roubaix is not how many watts you can produce, but how many watts you can actually deliver to the rear wheel under cobblestone vibration. Road vibration increases neuromuscular energy leakage; handlebar and core stiffness determine effective power. In the 2026 season, Pogačar lost the two-up sprint to Wout van Aert here and finished second—a clear demonstration that even the most complete all-rounder is not guaranteed to take this one.

Flanders and Liège: Two Completely Different Climbs

• Flanders: Cobbled steep walls like the Koppenberg are 30-second to 1-minute anaerobic bursts, requiring repeated recovery from the red zone
• Liège: The Ardennes’ consecutive mid-length climbs are a threshold endurance game; accumulated elevation gain is the killer
• Both are called “climbing,” but one trains anaerobic recovery and the other trains threshold durability—the training prescriptions are almost opposites

Il Lombardia: The End-of-Season Fatigue Harvester

Il Lombardia comes at the tail end of the season, with technical descending attacks following long climbs. By then, a full year of accumulated fatigue is written into everyone’s legs. Whoever’s durability declines the least can gamble their life on the final descent. It and San Remo neatly bookend the season’s start and finish, yet their demands are poles apart.

What makes completing all five Monuments the Holy Grail of cycling is that it demands the same body be simultaneously a sprinter (San Remo), an anaerobic repeat machine (Flanders), a cobblestone tank (Roubaix), a threshold endurance engine (Liège), and a descending gambler (Lombardia). Physiologically, these are almost mutually exclusive—which is why when someone comes close to completing the set, the entire cycling world holds its breath.

Related Reading

• A Tour of the Five Monuments: The Historical Status of Milan-San Remo, Tour of Flanders, Paris-Roubaix, Liège-Bastogne-Liège, and Il Lombardia
• The Arithmetic of the Poggio at Milan-San Remo: After 290 km, Those 5 Minutes Decide Everything
• A Complete Analysis of Tactical Differences Between One-Day Classics and Stage Races
• Milan-San Remo: The Longest Tactical Overture of the Spring Classics