Belgian champion does solo surge to victory in Flanders
BELGIAN champion Philippe Gilbert carried his bike over the line above his head as he won the prestigious Tour of Flanders for the first time yesterday with a remarkable solo breakaway.
Gilbert, 34, attacked alone with 55km of the 261km race to go and held on to win as world champion Peter Sagan and Olympic gold medallist Greg van Avermaet crashed 17km from the end of the cobbled classic.
Van Avermaet picked himself up to take second place ahead of Gilbert’s Quick Step Floors teammate Niki Terpstra but the crash with Sagan and Oliver Naesen potentially robbed the race of a grandstand finish.
Instead, Gilbert’s audacious solo breakaway paid dividends.
Victory in Flanders added to the 2012 world champion’s impressive achievements that include stage wins at all three grand tours and victories in two other Monument races: Liege-Bastogne-Liege and the Giro di Lombardia.
It was his seventh participation at Flanders and first for five years, having previously come third in 2009 and 2010.
But while a BMC teammate of Belgian compatriot Van Avermaet’s, he was forced to ride the Ardennes classics rather than the cobbled ones.
He was part of a group of 14 riders who broke clear of the peloton about 90km from the finish as another teammate, three-times Flan- ders winner Tom Boonen, accelerated up the iconic Muur climb.
Both Van Avermaet and Sagan were caught out and left in the peloton, which quickly lost a minute.
They had started to close in when, with 55km to go and on the second ascent of the 2.2km-long Oude-Kwaremont climb, Gilbert broke clear on his own.
A crash took out Belgian Sep Vanmarcke, third in 2014 and last year, also taking down Briton Luke Rowe and forcing Maciej Bodnar off the road.
It slowed the breakaway, allowing Van Avermaet and Sagan to catch the breakaway group, but Gilbert remained in front on his own.
The Belgian champion stretched his lead to more than a minute but had a long way to go solo to hold off a group containing many of the favourites and strongest riders in the race.
On the Taaienberg climb at 37km from the finish, Boonen suffered a mechanical problem that ended his chances while Sagan and Van Avermaet went on the offensive.
They formed a seven-man chase group just under a minute behind as Gilbert hit the third and final ascension of the Oude-Kwaremont climb with 18km left.
Sagan attacked on that climb with only Van Avermaet and Naesen able to follow but suddenly the world champion clipped the barriers and went down, taking his two companions with him.
Their crash left Gilbert free to ride to victory. Van Avermaet took the sprint finish for second. – AFP