The race that remembers
The Memorial Marco Pantani is not a big race by the calendar’s arithmetic — a September one-dayer from Riccione to Cesenatico, the 23rd edition — but it is a heavy one. It finishes in the seaside town where Il Pirata grew up, a few streets from his museum, and every year the Romagna hills fill with fans who never stopped grieving him. The 2026 route did what it always does: a triple loop inland over the San Lorenzo in Scanno (1.7 km at 7.9%) and the Bivio Roncofreddo, then 40 flat kilometres and four laps of a local circuit along the coast — a course that lets the climbers escape and then makes them earn every metre of keeping it.
Four over the top
A six-man break of Golliker, Cavagna, Izquierdo, Mintegi, Bais and Pezzo Rosola gave the day its shape before the climbs took over. Inside the final 80 km the real move began — Michael Storer, the defending champion, with Giulio Pellizzari and Alex Aranburu forcing it on the climbing loop — and the last ascent of San Lorenzo in Scanno distilled the front of the race to four: Storer, Pellizzari, Mikkel Honoré and Ion Izagirre. They crested with 1:02 in hand at 26 km to go, watched it shrink to 40 seconds with 11 km left as the sprinters’ teams wound up behind, and rode the Cesenatico circuit like four men pushing a safe uphill. It held. On days like this it doesn’t, usually. It held.
The old man’s sprint
Inside the last four kilometres the alliance dissolved into attacks, all of them covered, which meant a four-up sprint on the seafront — and the oldest man in the group turned out to have the youngest legs. Izagirre launched at 200 metres and held Pellizzari off all the way to the line, with Honoré third and Storer fourth. It is the 37-year-old Basque’s 20th career victory, in the final season before retirement — a career of stage wins in all three Grand Tours, an Olympic medal’s worth of near-misses, and now two wins in his farewell year after the GP Miguel Indurain in spring. For Pellizzari, second three days after winning the Giro della Toscana, the autumn keeps promising; at 22 the wins will come. For Izagirre, they already did, and he’s collecting the interest.
In the grupetto
A hilly one-dayer in September is full of riders racing for contracts, for Worlds selection, or for nothing but the love of it, and the grupetto honours all three species. A nod to the six who made the early break on a day the climbers had already claimed, and to Aranburu, who did the work that formed the winning move and wasn’t in it at the end — Basque cycling giveth to Izagirre what it taketh from Aranburu. And a quiet one, as always in Cesenatico, for the man on the race poster, gone 22 years and still the reason the roadsides are full.
Moral of the story
Four riders held off a peloton for 40 flat kilometres because all four needed the escape to work more than they needed to win it — right up until the moment only one of them could. The grupetto’s moral: a breakaway is a truce with an expiry time, and the rider who knows the exact minute it expires wins the sprint. Izagirre knew. Twenty wins, one season left, and a victory in Pantani’s town to carry into retirement. Chapeau, Ion. Leave the light on for the rest of us.
