Strade Bianche, a beautiful, prestigious race that just finished another incredible edition, has a lot of people asking whether it should be included among cycling’s Monuments. It shouldn’t be. It can’t be. It won’t be. The reasoning is circular, but true: It can’t be one, because it isn’t one. Similarly circular: the good news is that that is good news.
The five Monuments are a fixed set, decided at some random moment in cycling history (the ‘80s, IIRC) based on some malleable formula of age, location, prestige, and continuity. They are a collection of fairly dissimilar races grouped together for fairly trivial purposes and to no particular end, a fairly unnuanced shorthand for old, important races. Like it or not, the ante seems psychologically set at a 100-year history, and by the time Strade Bianche accumulates those 100, the ante will be 200 years. It’s an arbitrary criteria for an arbitrary distinction.
The closest analog that comes to mind is the Ivy League. It’s a group of eight schools versus five races, but the criteria are similar. Ivy League, too, is a distinction based on a malleable formula of age, location, prestige, and continuity. Many of the members share little in common with one another, and there’s little that they don’t share with other, non-Ivy schools. The term dates to the ‘30s and ‘40s, when a handful of prestigious northeastern colleges began to coalesce around athletic standards (yes, athletic, not academic). It has accrued all manner of implied meanings since, much like Monument, but whatever the Ivy League is or means, it is those eight schools now. There is no bar of achievement to be cleared to gain entry, no magic combination of attributes that unlocks the door.
As with Monuments, the Ivy League distinction is also relatively meaningless one. Despite the common connotations, membership doesn’t really mean much, other than at the most superficial level. It’s shorthand for a particular set of good northeastern schools. There are schools in the U.S. that are older than most Ivy League schools (like William & Mary), there are schools that are more expensive (Chicago, Harvey Mudd, GW), there are schools that are equal or better academically, schools whose degrees lend as much or more weight within given fields, schools that offer a better student experience. People still twist that Ivy League designation into all sorts of other meanings (see, for example, Biden’s comments on the ability to pay student loan debt). But mostly, it’s just branding.
Similarly, the Monuments are their own shorthand for races of a certain prestige, but not necessarily the “most” of anything. There have been U.S. criteriums that pay better than the Ronde. Milano-Torino is older than Milano-Sanremo, and Paris-Tours and Paris-Roubaix are nearly twins – born the same year, northern, flat – their divergent fortunes shaped by different twists of fate and world history. There have been barn-burner editions of Gent-Wevelgem and snoozer Milan-Sanremos. And Strade Bianche has consistently served up more compelling racing than recent editions of Liege-Bastogne-Liege, suffering not-at-all from not having a fabricated credential bestowed upon it.
In short, Strade Bianche doesn’t need to be a Monument any more than Stanford or MIT or Northwestern need to be Ivy League schools. It’s just fine without it, and we’d be better off not getting hung up on the verbiage. What RCS has done with Strade Bianche is something cycling should be celebrating: they have created something new and beautiful and successful and resonant in a sport that has struggled to find sustainability while it labors under its commitment to tradition.
The Monuments are what they are. Why try to force Strade into the mix for the sake of some false tinge of history or unnecessary, manufactured prestige? It’s a faux finish over real gold. Strade Bianche’s value is already there in the drama, the landscape, and the love from the riders and the fans. Let it serve as an example to other organizers, would-be sponsors, host cities, and entrepreneurs that great new things are possible in cycling. In 100 years, maybe there will be a set of races created right now that are so durable, so loved, and so character-laden, they’ll have their own collective name. Besides, if you make Strade Bianche a Monument, the Dutch are going to be so, so mad.