Time to look at the teams and the number of races they’ve won. It might be early in the spring classics season but we’re almost a quarter of the way through the season as measured by the number of days of racing and therefore the amount of wins up for grabs.
It’s also the chance to evaluate some issues from Tinkoff-Saxo’s managerial mess to Astana’s looming licence loss.
Luca Paolini goes solo in the final kilometres, his breakaway rivals only a murky blur behind. He was dropped over the Kemmelberg but kept chasing and eventually latched on to the small group of riders chasing Jurgen Roelandts. Hiding among giants Paolini emerged in the finish with a sneaky seated attack to catch Etixx-Quickstep out once again.
This Sunday’s race is the most sprinter-friendly of the cobbled classics and it’s World Tour race too, so we get action and a deep field. Cobbles and climbs feature but so does a long section to the finish line to suit the sprinters. Only the weather could ravage the race with very strong winds forecast.
Geraint Thomas goes solo with 4km to go. A year ago he reached Harelbeke with Peter Sagan and paid the price in the sprint. Now he went clear of Sagan and Zdeněk Štybar to win alone.
It marked a tense conclusion to a dramatic race, although the number of crashes will cast a shadow over the rest of the cobbled classics.
It may not be the Ronde van Vlaanderen or Paris-Roubaix but chances are millions have heard about this race in recent weeks. Only for forget the Photoshopped poster because the E3 Harelbeke is a real race that’s growing in stature to become one of the finest cobbled classics of the season. Better still there’s a long list of riders and teams who really need a win starting from today.
A follow-up to yesterday’s piece about José Joaquín Rojas, the master of finishing fourth. Some have asked about Greg Van Avermaet and his ability to place regularly. Is he the king of second place, the present-day peloton Pou-Pou? Time to crunch the numbers.
José Joaquín Rojas celebrates but it’s Movistar’s jefe Alejandro Valverde who wins the stage in the Volta a Catalunya, collecting the helpful 10 second time bonus. Valverde is no stranger to winning, in his early years he was called El Imbatido, the unbeaten one. Rojas by contrast is admired and even mocked for finishing fourth so often. Is it true he’s the king of fourth place, the chocolate medallist specialist?
Tinkoff-Saxo team manager Bjarne Riis has been suspended by Oleg Tinkov. It’s hard to see the Dane coming back from this, in fact he’ll probably be delighted to pedal off into the sunset, his panniers loaded with Euros. Yet it’s far more than a clash between two men, this is the story of the whole team, Alberto Contador included, and there are lessons for the sport as a whole.
After a mini-Tour de France and a mini-Giro in Paris-Nice and Tirreno-Adriatico, the Volta a Catalunya sees a week of stage racing but it’s not a mini-Vuelta. There’s only one summit finish and no time trialling at all.
The field is packed with stage race specialists with Alberto Contador and Chris Froome as the obvious stars yet the outcome is far from predictable. With a series of tricky stages, variable weather and the hard final stage in Barcelona the winner will need to play their tactical cards carefully. It’s live on TV all week.
John Degenkolb sprints on the Via Roma. He was the fastest in the sprint but in order to contend he rode an impressive final kilometre to get into position, going in the wind to overtake several riders after a clever ride in the final kilometres, with ideal positioning on the Poggio.