<DIV>The Tour de France may provide the most obvious fame and glory, but it is cycling’s one-day tests that the professional riders really prize. Toughest, longest and dirtiest of all are the so-called "Monuments", the five legendary races that are the sport’s equivalent of golf’s majors or the grand slams in tennis. Milan–Sanremo, the Tour of Flanders, Paris­–Roubaix, Liège–Bastogne–Liège and the Tour of Lombardy date back more than a century, and each of them is an anomaly in modern-day sport, the cycling equivalent of the Monaco Grand Prix.<br/> <br/> Time has changed them to a degree, but they remain as brutally testing as they ever have been. They provide the sport’s outstanding one-day performers—the likes of Philippe Gilbert, Fabian Cancellara, Mark Cavendish, Tom Boonen, Peter Sagan and Thor Hushovd—with a chance to measure themselves against each other and their predecessors in the most challenging tests in world cycling. From the bone-shattering bowler-hat cobbles of the Paris–Roubaix to the insanely steep <I>hellingen </i>in the Tour of Flanders, each race is as unique as the riders who push themselves through extreme exhaustion to win them and enter their epic history.<br/><br/> Over the course of a century, only Rik Van Looy and Eddy Merckx have won all five races. Yet victory in a single edition of a Monument guarantees a rider lasting fame. For some, that one victory has even more cachet than success in a grand tour. Each of the Monuments has a fascinating history, featuring tales of the finest and largest characters in the sport. In <I>The Monuments </i>Peter Cossins tells the tumultuous history of these extraordinary races and the riders they have immortalised.</div>