Tom Boonen won the sprint to the line. As you can see from the image above he is level with the lime green Peter Sagan and the red and white Oscar Freire with 200m to go. But this was not the crucial moment of the race. Instead an acceleration 30km from the finish on the Monteberg climb made all the difference.
It’s not just the clocks that change. Recently this race was a mid-week test, sandwiched between the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix. Still a prestigious race in its own right, it was often for the sprinters and it would also allow the “losers” from the Ronde to fine tune their moves ahead of Roubaix. Now it stands on Sunday and is part of the World Tour calendar, a promotion to a higher status.
The GP E3 Harelbeke race is on today, marking the beginning of a four week period of spring classics in and around Belgium. In particular the region of Flanders will host many races. A hotbed of cycling, some opinion polls suggest that nobody else in the world likes cycling as much as the inhabitants of Flanders. Here is a look at the region via its language, its flag and more.
Our sport has its classic races. Some are more than 100 years old, for example Liège-Bastogne-Liège was first run in 1892. Over time they’ve developed legends and histories that go a long way to make the sport what it is today. Sometimes a new race comes along and the organisers struggle to make it work. They could do well to learn the lesson of the wonderful Strade Bianche race which takes place today, combining local history with a free internet video stream.
Sep Vanmarcke’s win in the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad race last Saturday was a breakthrough for the Belgian rider but in hindsight only a matter of time. Here is a quick look at his past performances in order to help us assess where he goes next.
He started in a club famed for its champion riders and now he could join them as a top Flandrien. There’s also a look at his spectacular crash in the Vuelta last year.
The season started in January, collarbones have been snapped already. We’ve had racing in the Middle-East and the shores of the Mediterranean too. But this weekend marks the start of racing in Belgium and the intensity of the racing goes up and the quality of the road surface goes down.
No more six star hotels or posing for photos with a koala, it’s back to winter, narrow lanes, mud and cobbles.
On Saturday there was the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and Sunday has Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne. Here’s a preview with maps, profiles, favourites and info on TV schedules (updated after Saturday’s racing).
For many in northern Europe winter is long. But there are signs of spring in Belgium today. Mother nature can give us clues with early blooming flowers amd cycling has its own annual rituals. Today’s recon rides by teams on the course of the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad are very much part of the spring routine. The spring classics are coming.
Past Vélo d’Or winner Alberto ContadorWith the pro road race season finished, now is the time to look back and reflect on the past season. I don’t want to spend winter doing endless retrospectives and lists of the best this and that. But hindsight does allow us the chance to review things.
Soon Vélo Magazine will publish the winner of the Vélo d’Or award (“golden bike). In football the Ballon d’Or prize is one of the most prestigious awards and this sister prize too must be one of the best awards in cycling. They ask cycling journalists around the world for their best five riders of the season and add up all the contributions to see who has come out on top. It is hard to pick five riders from a cast of thousands but for the fun of it I thought I’d see who I’d rate right now.
Luckily there’s more to the sport than out of control sports officials. This Sunday’s Paris – Tours is one of the autumn classics and often known under the label of “the sprinters classic”. The race doesn’t actually start in Paris, but outside the French capital in a small town called Voves. Nevertheless the distance of 230km is exactly the same if you started in central Paris and rode to the city of Tours. This is because the route snakes, especially with a kink in the final to borrow some hillier terrain, the potential launch pad for attacks.
History
Today the race enjoys the status of a classic, the term used to describe a prestigious international race that has stood the test of time. It’s fashionable for organisers of new races to name their event a “classic” for example the one-off Olympic test race was branded the London Surrey Cycle Classic. But Paris-Tour is authentic, with the first edition held in 1896. Nevertheless the history has been uncertain, with cancellations for war and for a while the route was modified as a loop in the region. The list of winners includes many sprinters but it remains one of the few classics that Eddy Merckx never won.
The finish of the 2012 Tour of Flanders will change from Meerbeke to Oudenaarde. If you’re not familiar with these places, Meerbeke isn’t famous for much whilst Oudenaarde is more at the heart of Flanders and is home the museum of the Ronde Van Vlaanderen too.
The race itself is arguably the king of one day races thanks to a combination of distance, the climbing and emotional and knowledgeable roadside crowds. For many years the epicentre of action has been the Kapelmuur. It’s so good they named it twice as others call it the Muur van Geraardsbergen. The locals say “the Muur choses the winner” and like many sayings, this isn’t always the case but it makes sense.
But the story of the 2012 race isn’t so much the change of the finish town but the new route. Next year the race will not visit the Muur and nor the Bosberg too.