Five highlights from the year, presented in no particular order. They’re picked for great sport and because we can apply the benefit of hindsight.
First is Gent-Wevelgem. It had suspense, it had surprise and it had a full cast of contenders too.
The Flemish classics seem to be melding into the same race, often using the same roads which means they’re losing some of the geographic identity, a sense heightened by confusing nomenclature. The Omloop uses the old Ronde route and the E3 Harelbeke borrows bits of both. Confusingly the Tour of Flanders doesn’t tour all that much of Flanders while the E3 Harelbeke prize is named after a road that was renamed the E17 in 1985. These days Gent-Wevelgem doesn’t start in Gent but Ypres. It’s a bit like buying soap powder where you can chose the brand but they all come out of the same factory.
This convergence is because the core product appeals: 200km or more of gritty racing with selective climbs, cobbles and dirt roads. Gent-Wevelgem delivers all this and this year’s edition had the additional ingredient of crosswinds.
Gent-Wevelgem’s passage close to the coast for the moeren marshlands helped speed up the race and with over 100km to go the action had started. Mathieu van der Poel launched the first time up the Kemmelberg and found himself swamped by Lidl-Trek with Jasper Philipsen and Mads Pedersen on his wheel, then joined by Jonathan Milan proving his range goes well beyond the sprints. Laurence Pithie was up there too, a breakthrough and looking elegant until the lights went out.
It’s not essential but many a good sporting contest gets reduced to a duel; it’s better than one rider going clear and the last hour turning into a victory parade, at least for viewers even if the rider still has to pull off a huge effort. This time Mads Pedersen and Mathieu van der Poel rode into the finish and the sprint was tight. The Dane launched and Van der Poel was on the wheel, it looked like the world champ was going to come around but as he got level he could do no more.
Why the pick?
The best spring classic? That’s subjective but here’s the argument: we had sport for hours on end and Mathieu van der Poel beaten right at the end. Not that Van der Poel deserved to lose, it’s just we got suspense and it even looked like he was going to win as he drew level with Pedersen with 50m, only to suddenly fold. Van der Poel was impressive in the Ronde and Roubaix but to the point of the thrill fading in the final hour.
Better still for Gent-Wevelgem, possibilities opened up for the upcoming races with Lidl-Trek as a collective force looking ready to take on Alpecin-Deceuninck and Visma-LAB, their demonstration that day was impressive. This was a satisfying feast that only left us hungry for more. Alas…
With hindsight
…the next classic on the calendar was Dwars Door Vlaanderen. While Matteo Jorgenson took a deserved win, the day – and the rest of the cobbled classics – was overshadowed by the crash that day with Mads Pedersen among those crashing but of course Wout van Aert faring the worst, but it ruined the spring for Biniam Girmay and Anthony Turgis among others too, including many onlookers.
One nagging thought is that if the star riders really want to win the Ronde and Roubaix then they may think twice about smaller races and sit them out for the sake of risk, an understandable reaction to this year’s events but a reaction indeed.
To end on a more positive note, it’s promising just to imagine a rematch of this race and the others, but with an improved Laurence Pithie joined by Oier Lazkano to lead Red Bull in the classics and we’ll see if they can widen the cast further.