Bergamo (Italy) (AFP)

He is just 20 years old and has never even taken the start of one of the five "monuments" of cycling, but he will nevertheless be the favorite on Saturday at the start of the Tour of Lombardy: sensation of the start of the season, Belgian Remco Evenepoel is ready to conquer Italy.

Four stage races - Tour of San Juan, Tour of the Algarve, Tour of Burgos and Tour of Poland - four victories! There was arguably no better way to reclaim the man to beat label on Saturday between Bergamo and Como.

"Favorite? Maybe it's a bit of my fault," said the champion of the Deceuninck-Quick Step team on Friday in La Gazzetta dello Sport, who already imagines him as a possible winner of the next Giro.

"I like this role, it gives me more motivation than stress. It gives me positive energy," Evenepoel also said Thursday before explaining how he approached this first start in one of the great classics of the calendar.

"I'm very impatient because this race means a lot to me. This is my first Monument and it is, together with Liège-Bastogne-Liège, one of my favorite one day races. I've already watched so much this race and now I can take part in it, it's special. "

This "Lombardia" 2020 will also be special for everything that the region carries as a symbolic burden after the passage of the coronavirus, which was particularly devastating there with more than 16,000 deaths out of the 35,000 recorded in Italy.

Before departure, a minute of silence will also be observed in memory of the victims of the Covid. "This departure maintained in Bergamo is very symbolic, after the events which affected our city", summarized the mayor Giorgio Gori.

- hard journey -

The "classic of dead leaves" has also been moved from autumn to midsummer and in the heat and its plateau finds itself deprived of many climbers, concentrated on the preparation of the Tour de France and engaged on the Dauphiné.

"The period leaves me a little perplexed. It changes everything", judged at the end of July Vincenzo Nibali, twice winner of the event and who despite an uncertain form could be one of the main dangers for Evenepoel.

"Lombardy is normally at the end of the season, when the temperatures are cooler. And there it will be just after Milan-Sanremo. Pam-pam! Two monuments in quick succession," noted the Italian.

The period and the plateau will be unusual but the route does not change, hard and intended for climbers. Before arriving on the shores of Lake Como after 231 kilometers, the riders will have gone through the traditional difficulties of the Italian classic, the Madonna del Ghisallo, the Sormano wall with its passages over 25% and the climb of San Fermo della Battaglia in the end.

The favorite is therefore Evenepoel, because as La Gazzetta writes, "there is almost nothing that cannot be done in the saddle of a bicycle".

Nibali will have on his side his perfect knowledge of a race he has already raced 12 times and there are still some other contenders.

His teammate Bauke Mollema, triumphant last season, is one of them, like Richard Carapaz, winner of the last Tour of Italy, Jakob Fuglsang, George Bennett, who won Wednesday on the Gran Piemonte, or the Italians Giulio Ciccone and Diego Ulissi.

© 2020 AFP