Oscar Freire looked good in the finale of Milan-Sanremo and was, for many observers, a strong contender for the final victory right up until the end of the race.
However a three man break spearheaded by Fabian Cancellara (RadioShack Nissan) tipped the balance against him, as did slightly sluggish legs which cost him his chance of marking that move.
Freire’s Katusha team-mates pushed the pace to try to haul the break back, but ended up two seconds short. As things turned out, the Spaniard wasn’t the fastest in the sprint, anyway, with Peter Sagan (Liquigas Cannondale), John Degenkolb (1t4i) and Filippo Pozzato (Farnese Vini - Selle Italia) finishing ahead of him in the gallop for fourth.
That said, Freire has a strong instinct for victory. If the win was on the line rather than that minor placing, he could potentially have pulled out a bigger effort.
The Spaniard explained afterwards that he didn’t have it when it counted. “Today I did my best…I couldn´t do more than this. Unfortunately my legs didn´t react as I expected, and when the breakaway in the end started I realized I couldn´t fight for win,” he said.
“Anyways, I stayed with the group because I wanted the bunch sprint finale. Even if I felt better I wouldn´t have tried to stay with Nibali, Cancellara and Gerrans.”
Freire’s Katusha team-mates Xavier Florencio and Luca Paolini did more than the others in the finale to try to bring the first three back. Had other teams pulled harder, the Cancellara move may well have been caught; directeur sportif Valerio Piva recognised that his riders had given their all and had nothing to be ashamed of.
"I would like to congratulate the whole team. We did our best in order to win this competition, so we shouldn´t be disappointed. Our strategy was perfect, but today Cancellara was incredible, keeping an incredible pace during the whole final part and basically allowed Gerrans to win.”
Freire’s fans will rue the notion that this will be the Spaniard’s final chance to win the race. He has said that 2012 is his final season, and reiterated that in recent days when speaking to VeloNation prior to Milan-Sanremo.
However, intriguingly, he appeared to keep the door very slightly open today, in that he didn’t speak in definitive terms about hanging up his wheels. “This could be my last ´Milano-Sanremo´, but I´m not disappointed,” he said. “As I said before, I did my best so I have no regrets".
His fans will hang onto the word ‘could,’ hoping that today’s participation in La Primavera and the disappointment of not signing off with a fourth victory will prompt Freire to give it one more shot in 2013.