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There are five of them. Three bear the name of the start and finish line, through a hyphen. The other two refer to the great cycling rounds of France and Italy. These are the benchmark one-day races. Milan-San Remo, Paris-Roubaix, Liège-Bastogne-Liège, the Tour of Flanders and the Giro d'Normandy. Unique competitions, with more than a century of history, that have contributed many elements to the epic imaginary of cycling. From the cobblestones to the extreme exhaustion of athletes. Races that hook the fans from the uncertainty of the result. Any participant can win. It only takes that, for a few hours, the fitness, the right strategy and that point of luck that must accompany any success align. But hope is shared among all the bikes that take the start. As if a new life were beginning that will last just a few hours and in which inequality will not play as important a role as it plays on a day-to-day basis.
In Monuments (Road Books), the British journalist Peter Cossins collects and narrates in detail the history of the five races that make up the elite of this type of race and that, at some point, began to be encompassed under the name that gives the book its title. A story that began to be written with the victory of the Belgian Léon Houa in the first Liège-Bastogne-Liège, back in 1892. Houa, aboard an 11.6-kilogram bike – around twice as much as the current ones – came into first place after 11 hours on the road. After a crash in the final stretch that took one of the pedals in front of him, he completed the race using only one leg, causing the delirium of the fans who were waiting for him at the finish line. The story of the passion and glory of the one-day races was beginning to be written. A new metaphor for life. With its beginning, its end and everything that happens in between concentrated in an ephemeral instant.
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