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The spring of 2012 was when I was really able to make my presence felt at the classics, where I was unable to get a win but finished in the top ten at Milan–San Remo, Gent–Wevelgem, and the Tour of Flanders, and even managed to get on the podium at a hilly race like Amstel Gold. I was being asked if becoming a classics specialist was blunting my sprint, but that was just daft. Sprinting to win a stage of a race where most of the combatants’ first priority is to get through to the next day unscathed is an entirely different proposition to taking a Monument like Flanders or Roubaix home with you. For a start, it’s a case of “shit or bust.” You win, or you go home; there’s no second chance waiting tomorrow, meaning that crazy do-or-die efforts are the order of the day. Add to that the distance of each race. Milan–San Remo can be 300 kilometers long, and the bunch smashes it out of Milan and over the Turchino Pass like greyhounds out of the traps. The stamina that’s needed to be strong after seven hours of racing is not the same as the stamina a track cyclist needs to blast past somebody on the Olympic Velodrome after a couple of laps. Suddenly “sprinter” is a much more complicated term than it would originally appear.