Five years after his last victory and four years on from the career-threatening crash in which he fractured his pelvis and ruptured his ACL, his MCL, and his meniscus, Michael crossed the finish line in Mombaroccio with his arms in the air as he always believed he could. The way he attacked the final climb, a 4.2-kilometer ramp with double-digit slopes, and held off the charging peloton showed that the former Omloop Nieuwsblad and Amstel Gold winner is back to his best.

“It was just awesome,” Michael said. “The way the course was, you would never have bet on me in a million years if you looked at that profile. The way I rode it makes the win extra special.”

Tirreno-Adriatico was just the second race of Michael’s 2026 season. He spent the winter at home in Denmark with his family, taking care of their newborn son with his wife. Training on wet, windswept roads around Østerild, he worked through the cold and dreary months, dreaming of spring in Italy.

His focus now is on Milano-Sanremo — La Primavera — the 300-kilometer Monument that descends from Lombardy to the Riviera dei Fiori. After a long prelude through the Po Valley, the race crosses the Turchino Pass and drops down to the Ligurian Sea, where it hits the Capos Cervo, Berta, and Mele, before coming to a crescendo up the iconic climbs of the Cipressa and the Poggio. Michael’s ride at Tirreno gave him confidence that he can pass the race’s decisive tests.

“It is always nice to come off a win. You know the form is there and the shape is really good,” Michael said. “Going into Milano-Sanremo, I have high hopes. I really hope that I can nail it, because then with the legs I have now, I think the fight for the podium is quite realistic. That’s my ambition — to be in the fight for the podium spot. To pull that off is going to be really difficult, but I think it’s realistic. At Tirreno, the climb was a double-digit gradient, while the Cipressa and the Poggio are just around four or five percent. That requires more high-speed power, which is good because it means there is more draft. Basically, it's harder for the best guys to ride away. The watts I did at Tirreno are going to be pretty much the same as what I will need to do at Sanremo. Hopefully, I can just keep my 500-and-something for 10 minutes, and I should be there in the finale.”

To do his best in the crucial final kilometers of Milano-Sanremo, Michael will draw on all of the experience he has gained from doing the race earlier in his career. This will be the seventh time he has raced the Italian spring Monument.

“It is really going to help that I've done the race quite a few times,” Michael said. “It's a really long race. You can't just sit in at the beginning and talk to your mates and not be concentrated, because you might spend stupid energy which you just can’t afford to lose, because it's such a long race. Even though it's not long in time, it's long in kilometers. And something happens when you pass 250 kilometers, almost no matter how easily you've been riding all day. Your legs can feel like jelly or you're just on your game. You have to be smart. You stop to pee when the peloton stops for a pee and keep fueling all day. You need to stay out of the wind, stay behind big guys in the peloton, because there can sometimes be a little bit of a crosswind near the beginning south of Milano. It is really important to stay behind those big guys and get that extra draft and protection. There are all these small things that you can do throughout the day that really add up. You save, save, save, and then when you have to hit it, you hit it hard.”

The best power in the peloton won’t help if you hit the bottom of the Cipressa or the Poggio at the back of the pack, though. Coming into those climbs with the first riders is crucial. Michael has been doing his homework.

“I think I know where to move up before those two really important climbs,” he said. “In the past, I tried to go on the inside of one roundabout and then the outside. Just looking from videos, I think I found a really good path to get through that fight for position, which I think is going to be the key. Obviously, you then need legs. But positioning is 100 percent going to be key.”

Michael won’t have to do it alone on Saturday. Kasper Asgreen, Mikkel Honoré, Madis Mihkels, Alastair MacKellar, Luke Lamperti, and Harry Sweeny will be there to share the work in the wind and navigate the surging pack during the run-ups to the key climbs. Depending on how the race plays out, EF Education-EasyPost could play a number of cards at this year’s Milano-Sanremo.

“We have a super strong team,” Michael said. “Guys like Kasper and Harry could also ride the finale if they are on a top day. We’ll have to communicate a lot about how we're feeling and just be honest. Maybe I won’t feel great on the Capos and we will have to adjust, so I do the lead-out for Harry or for Kasper or whatever. Luke is going really well. If he can come over the Poggio in a group that catches the attackers, he can go for the sprint. I think there’s a realistic chance for him to finish on the podium if he rides the perfect race.”

If Michael is the one who makes it over the Poggio and into the dash down the descent to Sanremo, he has already visualized how it would best play out.

“I have my ideas of how I want to do the finale,” Michael said. “I was really unlucky when I did it back with the team in 2022. We were with only eight or nine guys over the Poggio. It was the year that Matej Mohorič went away on the downhill. I was in the first group, but then I had a mechanical on the descent. My chain fell off, so I never really got to make my move at the bottom. If we are in a group of 10, 15, or 20 riders in a line coming down the Poggio, I'm not going to sprint against those guys, because there are going to be like five guys there who are faster than me. There is that flat section where everybody stops and looks at each other just for a little bit of a second. That’s where I have to move.”

That’s the dream scenario, but anything can happen at Milano-Sanremo. That’s what makes La Primavera such a wonderful race.

“Obviously, the distance is what everybody talks about,” Michael said. “When you say Milano-Sanremo, everyone goes, ‘Oh, that’s the super long one.’ And it is, but as everyone also says, it’s the easiest one to finish, but the hardest one to win. I agree with that 100 percent. That’s the beauty of it. There are so many possible scenarios and so many riders who could win. There are the favorites, but you don’t really know who is going to be on top of that podium until the end of the day. It’s a really open, special race, which I think is good for cycling. We need some more unpredictable races.”

If there is one thing we have learned about Michael Valgren, it’s that he is good at defying the odds. Don’t be surprised if you see him charging over the top of the Poggio in the race for the win on Saturday.