A year after his breakthrough in the Spring Classics, Biniam Girmay will take on Milan-San Remo to open the 2023 campaign.

Two years ago, the Eritrean spent his final months with the dying Delco team as a promising young rider. In the fall, he moved to his current Belgian team, where he had some promising one-day results, including an U23 silver medal at the Leuven World Championships.

And now, for the first time, Gilmey enters the spring classics as the frontrunner for many one-day races in the coming months. Intermarche, which signed him to a four-year contract last spring, has essentially made him the star of the team after results-winning riders such as Alexander Kristoff, Domenico Pozzovivo, and Jan Hilt left for other teams over the winter.

So far in 2023, Gilmey has tasted victory in the opening stage of the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana. In the latter, he finished third and fourth, showing that he is in good condition but not yet in top form.

"Of course I'm in good shape in the spring. But I've been away from racing for almost a month, so I'm just slowly getting into better shape. I'm just getting back into the swing of things," Gil May told Cycling News and other media at Tirreno-Adriatico.

"I'm not at 100% but I'm still getting results. I'm sure I've prepared well for this race. So I want to be in perfect shape for Sanremo. That's one of the main goals for me and for the team this year. We are doing the best we can and we are getting better every day.

The first monument of the season, the Milano-Sanremo race is known as the easiest to finish and the most difficult to win. The course is a massive 294 km long, but the seven-hour duration is the toughest element of this parcours.

Of course, the final climb up Poggio is the crux of the race. The 4km, 3.6% hill south of San Remo is not a major challenge on its own, but after 290km of racing, fighting for position and charging at nearly 40km/h is a much tougher proposition than it appears on paper.

Then comes the winding 3km descent back to the coastal road to San Remo. Last year's winner, Matej Mohoric, led the pack up this climb and used his downhill skills and dropper posts to solo to victory. Staying at the top will be key again on Saturday.

"In general, it's all about positioning and leg strength," Gilmay said, emphasizing his positioning and bike handling.

"Sometimes I ask myself. I don't know how I'm always in a good position. It's like a gift. In Eritrea, most of the races are like the Belgian races. Corners, lefts, rights, small streets, in the city.

"There are always downhills like Poggio. There are no straight downhills, it's always little roads left and right. I train on these roads, so it's not a problem for me."

In his last Milan-San Remo debut, Gilmey joined the lead group at the top of Poggio, albeit a bit behind the leading quartet of Mohoric, Pogachar, Wout Van Alst and Seelen Krafft Andersen.

He finished the day in a respectable 12th place, but this time his goal was a podium finish.

"It's a hard race for sure, but I have dreams of getting a podium in San Remo, so I want to do my best.

"I have to take a few risks in the downhills, but of course this is a big race and I have no choice. You also need to know which riders you have to follow. Stronger riders can miss positions and when they do, they come back with a lot of energy to expend.

"So now that we have Tadei Pogachar, the race will be different, so it's all about seeing the right moves. It's not just Poggio, because the race has already started in Cipressa."

Gil May is a rarity in the pro peloton as the first black African-American athlete who can self-identify as a major star in contention for the Monument title.

His major victories to date have naturally come with sentiments that celebrate his importance to Eritrea and, by extension, to African cycling. He said in Leuven, "It means a lot to me, to my country, and to Africa," but now the mindset has changed and the focus is no longer limited to representing a country or continent.

"I don't just race for the people, for the fans," he said. So you have to race for yourself as well." Whether I win in Flanders or San Remo or at the Monument, it's the same for me."

"I think it's the easiest race to win in Monument, but it's also the hardest to win. So I just have to prepare as much as I can and give it my all."

[11] "It's totally difficult, so I can't tell you now to do this or that. This is my second year, so there is no need to forget about this. We just have to do our best."

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