The thrill of victory: Fabian Cancellara (Team CSC) won last year's edition of Milan-San Remo
photo Copyright © 2008 Fotoreporter Sirotti

Tomorrow is the 100th anniversary edition of Milan-San Remo (La Classicissima).  It is a whopping 298 kilometers (185 miles).  Bennati, Petacchi, Boonen, Cavendish, Hushovd, Davis, McEwen, Farrar.....Pozzato, Gilbert, Rebellin, Di Luca, Chavanel.  And of course the world continues to track the comeback of Lance Armstrong, with France's L'Equipe TV repeatedly airing a pre-Milan-Sanremo story on the 7-time Tour champion this evening.  Whether Armstrong is here simply to get some kilometers in his legs, measure his form against a world class peloton, as a favor to M-SR (and Giro) organizer RCS, or some combination thereof, the former classics rider is sure to attract plenty of attention.

There's something for every cycling fan at Milan-San Remo.  Not to be missed.

Race starts at: 9:45 CET (4:45am U.S. Eastern)
cycling.tv LIVE coverage (North America): 9:30am U.S. Eastern
Eurosport LIVE coverage: 15:50 CET (10:50am U.S. Eastern)

There will be other options for watching Milan-San Remo live video online, some geo-restricted.  For the complete list of live video streams, audio feeds, tickers and graphics, look for our 2009 Milan-San Remo Live Coverage Guide before the race start.  And as always, we'll update during the race with the best feeds.

Milan-San Remo Official Website
Start List

Cycling.tv tell us they are about one week away from implementing a Silverlight player.  Silverlight is Microsoft's answer to Adobe Flash which dominates the market.  (Flash is used in applications such as the Tour Tracker employed during the Tour of California.)

Silverlight was notably used by NBC to stream the Beijing Olympic Games and is used by the Netflix streaming service.

Silverlight promises new interactive features as well as "adaptive streaming" which allows the player to choose a bit rate based on available user bandwidth and CPU resources.  Of interest to users of Apple Macs is the fact that Silverlight supports Safari and Firefox Macintosh browsers.  CTV's Ben Golding indeed expects their new Silverlight player to meet the needs of Mac users.

We will of course be monitoring this.

Paris (cyclingfans.com) - One might think that with Lance Armstrong's return to cycling, negotiations for broadcast rights for races that Armstrong competes in would go smoothly.  After all, Armstrong is a big draw wherever he goes.  Organizers and broadcasters alike benefit from his presence.

Think again.  There isn't much easy about negotiating broadcast rights in today's world of complicated geo-restrictions, TV vs. online rights, and package deals.  And the presence of Armstrong raises the stakes for everyone.  If a race organizer or other rights owner packages, say, a race in March such as Milan-San Remo (Saturday) with an even bigger event such as the Giro d'Italia in May, and it isn't even clear by mid-March who an online broadcaster will be dealing with for Giro rights, online rights for Milan-San Remo can go unpurchased.  Everyone loses, especially cycling fans.

Fortunately, the unthinkable (no M-SR to a big market like the U.S.) has been avoided thanks to Ben Golding of cycling.tv/jumptv.com.  In a phone conversation this afternoon, Golding told me he sought and has secured rights for Saturday's Milan-San Remo.  The trick was to separate M-SR negotiations from Giro negotiations, not an easy task.  "I didn't want to lose Milan-San Remo," Golding told me.  Final paperwork is pending but Golding came to an agreement with rights owner RAI and the result is that cycling.tv will be broadcasting Saturday's race to cycling fans in the U.S. and Canada.

Cycling.tv's Milan-San Remo live race coverage Saturday is scheduled to run from 9:30am to 12pm U.S. Eastern with Anthony McCrossan and Brian Smith in the commentary box.

Anthony McCrossan, cycling.tv
Copyright © 2008 Pete Geyer/www.cyclingfans.com

More MS-R details to come...

cyclingfans.com will of course publish a full Milan-San Remo Live Coverage Guide later this week.

- Pete Geyer, Publisher, cyclingfans.com

Note: cyclingfans.com is a cycling.tv affiliate partner