Marc Hirschi wins the Marco Pantani Memorial 2024 in Cesenatico

The 2024 edition of the Marco Pantani Memorial, held today in Romagna between Cesena and Cesenatico, goes to Swiss Marc Hirschi. The Uae Team Emirates athlete won the sprint from a group of about forty riders, ahead of Lorenzo Milesi (Movistar Team) and Vincenzo Albanese (Arkea B&B Hotels). For Hirschi, born in 1998 (the year of Pantani’s Giro-Tour one-two punch…), it is the fifth success in just over a month, in a series that began on August 10 at the finish line in San Sebastian.This year the Marco Pantani Memorial took on an even more special meaning, as it marks the 20th anniversary of the great champion from Romagna’s passing, and the event highlighted it with the subtitle “2004 – 2024, twenty years without Marco.” The race organized by patron Adriano Amici’s Gruppo Sportivo Emilia and supported by the Panathlon Club Cesena, chaired by Dionigio Dionigi with vice-president Pino Buda, saw a partial return to the past for the Pantani memorial, which, after 12 years, once again set the start in the city of Cesena, in front of the Carisport arena on Via Ambrosini.THE STORY After about 30 kilometers of the race, a quartet formed at the lead, consisting of Filippo Turconi (VF Bardiani Csf Faizanè), Ivan Romeo (Movistar Team), Simon Carr (EF Education – Easypost) and Valentin Ferron (Total Energies). Maximum lead that touches 2’15” after about 70 kilometers of the race, then begins to drop. The last to give way are Carr and Romeo, caught with 80 kilometers to go, when the peloton becomes compact again. With 67 to go, three come out of the peloton: Filippo Baroncini (UAE Team Emirates), Matteo Vercher (Total Energies) and Marco Brenner (Tudor Pro Cycling Team). 1’06” is the maximum advantage, then Vercher slips on the descent and so Baroncini and Brenner remain in the lead with about forty kilometers to go. Behind them a small group of 12 men formed, and at minus twenty from the finish they were reabsorbed by the rest of the group. Baroncini and Brenner enter the circuit (four laps of 4 km each) with about a minute on the group. The margin of the two in the lead was reduced kilometer by kilometer, until they were caught with only 500 meters to go. At the sprint then Marc Hirschi preceded Lorenzo Milesi and Vincenzo Albanese by a bike, thus completing a great podium for this edition of the Marco Pantani Memorial.>> OFFICIAL ARRIVAL ORDER