Good morning folks, and welcome to the Eurosport live blog for Il Lombardia, the final monument of the season, the Ride of the Falling Leaves. I'm Tom Owen. You can reach me with questions, queries and personal sleights over on Twitter at @tomowencc.

Interestingly, despite being one of the teams of the past two years and boasting perhaps the world's fastest sprinter in Dylan Groenewegen, the team we now know as Jumbo-Visma has not won a monument since 2010, back when they were known as Rabobank.

Typically, you'd rely on your fast, endurance men to deliver monuments – names like Gilbert, Sagan, van Avermaet – but in today's climbing-heavy course, the Dutch squad has a real opportunity to end those nine years of hurt.

Alongside leader Roglic will be Sepp Kuss, the dynamic American climber, as well as Robert Gesink, who missed the Giro earlier this year with a late injury and Steven Kruijswijk who podiumed the Tour de France earlier this year. Talk about firepower.

The Muro di Sormano is where today's race is expected to really kick into gear. The full climb is six kilometres, but there is a section at 14% that goes on for more than two kilometres. That is going to wreak havoc in the peloton and truly separate the wheat from the chaff.

The fearsome climb comes with 57km to go.

The break is on the descent from the Colle Brianza, while the peloton is just about to crest.

To put those stats in the tweet into context, I struggle to do 55kph on a downhill without wigging out. Skujins averaged it on a steadily uphill road for nearly nine minutes!

An amazing insight into the power it took for Toms Skujins to make the breakaway today. The Latvian rider is a real team player, often sacrificing his own chances for others – so he will be eager to make this opportunity stick today.

Colle Brianza is next on the menu. It's a tough test, but a mere anti-pasti for what must follow. 4.3km a 4.9%.

The break has 5'45" on the peloton, with Primoz Roglic' Jumbo-Visma team doing the the lion's share of the pulling. Last year Roglic used his team mates to set up a platform from which he could springboard into a long-range solo. Will he try the same move again, or will the fact he imploded quite emphatically in the closing part of the 2018 race make him think twice?

We're two hours and 88km into the race. The tension begins to build!

Who's likely to win today? Take a look at the picks of some Eurosport luminaries (and me) in this article we published today.

Smart money certainly appears to be going in one direction. A Slovenian direction.

Long ways to go yet. The riders have a feed zone coming up in about 15km. The gap is creeping ever upwards. Nearly six minutes now.

And here is the always-compelling Cosmo Catalano from last year's Lombardia, where Thibaut Pinot managed to outgun the Shark or Messina to take his maiden monument win.

While the race is simmering, you absolutely must read Eurosport's Tom Bennett on exactly why Il Lombardia is such an alluring and romantic curtain closer for the road racing season.

First climb of the day has begun now and that should put a bit of a dent in the average speed. It's the six-kilometre Colle Gallo, which rises up from the town of Entratico at a gradient of 6.7%.

We'll see how the riders in the break are doing more clearly as they reach the top. It's far too early to think about going solo, but every rider there will have his eyes on the others in search of a weak link.

There are many names to get excited about in that group, from Fausto Masnada, who won that epic, rain-soaked stage of the Giro this year in San Giovanni Rotondo, to Remi Cavagna, who has been one of the breakout stars of 2019 with victories in the Tour of California and La Vuelta.

We are an hour into the racing in northern Italy and so far the riders have covered the ground at an average speed of 49kmh. There's certainly no sign of late-season malaise here!

There's a strong group of eight riders up the road, with a gap of five minutes.

Fausto Masnada (Androni-Sidermec), Davide Ballerini (Astana), Enrico Barbin (Bardiani-CSF), Cesare Benedetti (Bora-Hansgrohe), Remi Cavagna (Deceuninck-QuickStep), Petr Rikunov (Gazprom), Toms Skuijns (Trek-Segafredo) and Marco Marcato (UAE Team Emirates)