Five riders for your Il Lombardia fantasy teams

Our selections are based on our partner Cycling Fantasy, where players have a 5,000 credit budget to build a nine-rider team.

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Simmons was fourth here last year, 3:39 behind Pogačar on a day the Slovenian rode away from everyone, and he has carried that form through the back end of 2026. Fourth in the Worlds road race in Montréal. In the chase group at Québec. In the breakaway at Giro dell’Emilia last Saturday, where Lidl-Trek were among the most active teams.

The case for him is structural as much as physical. Lidl-Trek arrive with Giulio Ciccone and Juan Ayuso, both of whom will be marked from the moment the race hits the Ghisallo. Simmons is the third option on a team with three genuine cards, which means he can commit to a move on the Civiglio without anyone feeling obliged to close it immediately.

The reversed route helps him too. Finishing in Como puts the Civiglio and its technical descent inside the final 30 kilometres rather than earlier, which rewards a rider who can descend and then hold power over San Fermo. Of the five here, he is the one most likely to win outright rather than just place.

Widar took his first professional victory at Tre Valli Varesine on Tuesday, and the manner of it matters more than the result. He launched from 250 metres out against Tom Pidcock and Matteo Jorgenson, two riders with considerably more experience of three-up sprints, and had several bike lengths before either could respond. Pidcock said afterwards he had not expected that kind of acceleration.

The 20-year-old has the climbing to get there. He was second on the Andorra stage at the Vuelta behind Pogačar before losing almost four minutes on the gravel at Castelló, and before this season had finished in the top ten on eight of his ten career starts on this kind of profile. He also took the European under-23 title last year.

Lotto-Intermaché bring Lennert Van Eetvelt as a second option, which should spread the marking, and Widar is young enough that nobody will have planned their race around stopping him. Il Lombardia is a long way further than Tre Valli, but a rider who can kick after 196 kilometres is worth having on a day that ends on a short climb.

The last race of his career, and he thinks it could be his best ride at it. Bilbao has started Il Lombardia three times, always at the end of seasons he had emptied himself in by spring. This year is different: he skipped the Tour de France, rode the Vuelta entirely in service of Santiago Buitrago’s mountains jersey and Jakob Omrzel’s stage win at Calar Alto, and came out of it fresh.

The results across the long classics support it. He was 16th at Liège-Bastogne-Liège and 15th at the Clásica San Sebastián, and says mechanical problems rather than legs cost him at Amstel Gold Race and Strade Bianche.

“In every big classic I was always there feeling super,” Bilbao told Domestique this week. “With the age, it’s easier now for me to perform in this kind of long and very aerobic classic. I didn’t do the Tour, my only Grand Tour was the Vuelta, and I came out of it in really good condition, fresh and motivated. So this could be my best Lombardia for sure.”

Bahrain also bring Lenny Martinez, Buitrago and Antonio Tiberi.

Healy has built a career on going early and alone, which is the one approach that reliably produces winners at a Lombardia without Pogačar in it. He won a Tour de France stage in 2025 and became the first Irishman since Stephen Roche to wear yellow, holding it for two days, and took bronze at the World Championships in Kigali after attacking Mattias Skjelmose inside the final five kilometres. That was Ireland’s first elite men’s Worlds medal in decades.

His 2026 has been interrupted. He fractured his sacrum in a crash on a time trial recon at the Itzulia Basque Country in April, raced on to sixth in the mountains classification there, then missed the Ardennes entirely and did not return for nearly two months. He rode the Tour in service of Richard Carapaz, working over the Col du Galibier on stage 20 to help secure the polka dot jersey.

The autumn suggests the form is back. He was in the large chase group at Québec, tenth in the Worlds road race in Montréal, and accelerated repeatedly inside the final ten kilometres at Giro dell’Emilia last Saturday before Davide Piganzoli went clear on the descent.

EF arrive with Carapaz as their nominal leader, which should leave Healy free. He has the fourth-most attacking kilometres of anyone in the peloton this season, and on a course offering the Ghisallo, the Civiglio and San Fermo across 238 kilometres, there is no shortage of places to use them. He won the GP Industria in Larciano in 2023, so the Italian autumn is terrain he knows.

The least glamorous pick on this list and the one with the clearest brief. Meurisse is 34, in his first season at Pinarello-Q36.5 after three years at Alpecin-Deceuninck, and has not won in 2026. His classics results read 93rd at Milan-San Remo and 82nd at Liège, which hardly makes a compelling case for him.

What he does do is get up the road. He was second to Jhonatan Narváez from a breakaway at the Tour de Suisse in June, and made his 250th career start last month. On a 238-kilometre Monument, the early move goes before anyone is racing properly, and Meurisse is the sort of rider teams send into it.

Pinarello ride for Tom Pidcock, who has been second at both Giro dell’Emilia and Tre Valli Varesine in the past week and arrives as one of the favourites. They are also down a rider after Marcel Camprubí and Tom Gloag were hit by a police motorbike on Tuesday. Meurisse is free, cheap, and on a team with reason to put someone in front.