Biniam Girmay will be taking part in Milan-San Remo this weekend after a spell away from racing when he became a father for a second time, his team confirmed on Monday.
The Intermarché-Wanty squad have high hopes for the 2024 Tour de France green jersey winner for Saturday. Although neither he nor his team have taken a victory yet this season, Girmay placed well in the sprints in his previous race, the Volta ao Algarve, prior to heading back to Eritrea and missing a planned participation in the Opening Weekend.
In 2022, Girmay took the team's best-ever result in San Remo, twelfth, and a year later, when racing Tirreno-Adriatico, he emphasised to Cyclingnews why he felt he was so suited to La Primavera.
"In general, it's all about the positioning and also about the legs," Girmay said at the time.
"Sometimes I ask myself – I don't know how I'm always in a good position. It's just like a gift. I think I grew up like this because in Eritrea most races are kind of like Belgian races. Corners, left, right, small roads, in the city always.
"We have downhills like [the Poggio], always. We don't have straight downhills, it's always left and right, small roads. I train on this kind of road so for me it's not a problem."
Fast forward two more years, and with wins in Gent-Wevelgem, the Giro d'Italia and the Tour de France already in his palmares, Girmay will be gunning to be in the running on Saturday, team COO Maxime Segers told Nieuwsblad, even despite a previous month out from racing.
"Without a doubt, the Monument he dreams of the most this year," Segers said. "During his absence from the peloton, he was able to do his thing at home. You can consider it as an extra altitude training camp.
"He trained well, did everything the trainers asked and his values are also good. On Monday, he returned to Europe and flew straight to Milan. That way, he can still explore the course a bit in the coming days."
As Segers pointed out, while Girmay is not Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG), the Intermarché racer's top placings in the first part of the season plus his track record of performing well after training at home give the team reasons to expect a correspondingly solid ride on Saturday.
"On the Poggio, he just came up short in recent years, but on the downhill, he always ended up in a good group," Segers added. "We hope to see him compete with the very best this time.
"I think it's the easiest race to win of the Monuments but it's also difficult to win," Girmay argued back in 2023. "So I'll just prepare myself as best as I can and I'll give it everything." Two years on, to judge from his team's comments, he's applying the same approach.
