Van der Poel recrowned king of Flanders
Felix Lowe brings you up to speed with the past month’s racing, including a heart-stopping Milan-san Remo, a history-making Gent-wevelgem and a quite monumental Tour of Flanders
Watching the Tour of Flanders from home after being ruled out with Covid, Wout van Aert would have seen his big rival Mathieu van der Poel ride to a second title. To add salt to the wound, he would then have received a ping from Strava informing him the Dutchman had also taken his KOM on the infamous Koppenberg-to-taaienberg segment.
Crazily, Van der Poel wasn’t even fastest on those sections of cobbles during the 2022 Ronde. That would have been Tadej Pogačar, who pulverised the pack at this key point in the race but lost his head unit in a crash so his ride wasn’t recorded. To make matters worse, the Slovenian sensation sabotaged himself in the finale, somehow contriving to finish fourth in a two-horse race after chasing duo Dylan van Baarle and Valentin Madouas returned at speed on the home straight.
Pogačar’s uncharacteristic meltdown came four days after he’d missed the vital split in Dwars door Vlaanderen to finish tenth in another welcome display of mortality. Could he be human after all? Victory in both races went to a rider who looks less human by the day as Van der Poel firmly re-established himself at the top of the Classics food chain.
Back at the beginning of Flanders Week, it was Van Aert who was taking all the plaudits – the Belgian champion finishing arm-in-arm with Christophe Laporte in an emphatic Jumbo-visma one-two at the E3 Saxo Bank Classic. Laporte has been one of the revelations of the spring since his switch from Cofidis and he took second again days later at Gent-wevelgem as Eritrea’s Biniam Girmay made history in becoming the first African to win a cobbled Classic. Riding for the Belgian Intermarchéwanty-gobert Matériaux team, the 21-year-old honorary flahute out-kicked the Frenchman in a four-up sprint to cap an extraordinary debut.
Not even scheduled to ride, Girmay got a late call up after impressing two days earlier with fifth at E3. After his landmark win, Girmay flew home to Eritrea for a hero’s welcome having made monumental strides for African cycling. Neither he nor Van Aert were racing when Van der Poel got the better of another in-form Jumbo-visma rider, Tiesj Benoot, at the end of an enthralling edition of Dwars door Vlaanderen. Britain’s Tom Pidcock took third, then promptly signed a new five-year deal with Ineos Grenadiers.
World champion Elisa Balsamo won the women’s Gent-wevelgem for her third Worldtour triumph on the bounce; Italian youngster Ciara Consonni caused an upset in Dwars door Vlaanderen and Belgian champion Lotte Kopecky denied Dutch superstar Annemiek van Vleuten what would have been a record third win at Flanders.
Stretch back a few weeks and
Matej Mohorič, perhaps bored with his compatriots taking all the limelight, showed there’s more to Slovenian cycling than Pogačar and Primož Roglič. Less than a week after Pog and Rog won Tirreno-adriatico and Paris-nice respectively, Mohorič threw caution to the wind on the backside of the Poggio to ensure his Bahrain Victorious team lived up to its name.
Pogačar made no fewer than four hefty attacks going up the Poggio but none could do any irreparable damage to a leading group that also included
Van Aert and, on his first appearance of 2022, Van der Poel. Mohorič came to the front on the technical descent and put on a masterclass of downhill recklessness, at one point having to bunny-hop out of a gutter to prevent a crash. The pursuing Pogačar took his foot off the gas having clearly decided it was not worth the risk trying to keep up with such a maniac.
Elsewhere, Colombian Sergio Higuita made a career leap with victory in the Volta a Catalunya – his first Worldtour GC win. The seeds were sown on the penultimate day when he joined Richard Carapaz of Ineos in an epic long-range breakaway 130km from the finish. The Ecuadorian took the stage win but it was Bora-hansgrohe’s Higuita who nudged João Almeida, UAE’S Stage 4 winner, off the top of the standings.
Chris Froome, meanwhile, made his first appearance of the season at the Settimana Internationale Coppi e Bartali stage race, won by his old Ineos mucker Eddie Dunbar. Froome was well over an hour down on GC in 86th place, leaving his Israel-premier Tech team with a tough decision to make ahead of July. Perhaps we shouldn’t write off Froome just yet, however. As Mark Cavendish can vouch – miracles do happen.
Finally Cav made headlines again as the first British winner of Milano-torino, and the oldest winner of the oldest bike race in the world. Quickstep Alpha Vinyl teammate Fabio Jakobsen failed to add to his single stage win from Paris-nice, the Dutchman coming 86th in his Milansan Remo debut (some 85 places below Cav in his own debut 11 years earlier). Perhaps Quickstep need to think long and hard about which sprinter to take to the Tour this year… but you can read more on that topic on p42.
At time of writing, Felix is booking his place on the sofa in anticipation of Paris-roubaix