Christophe Laporte won Dwars door Vlaanderen to make it five wins from the five major cobbled races for Jumbo-Visma. Remarkable, but oddly unremarkable. The rider who really got the heart racing on Wednesday was the one who bounced his bike over the line 15 seconds later: Oier Lazkano.
Laporte’s solo victory felt oddly flat – routine, run-of-the-mill – but Lazkano’s ride was anything but. A Jumbo-Visma victory is easy to predict but a 23-year-old Movistar rider finishing second – after being in the breakaway all day – will have been on no one’s bingo card.
“I’m so, so happy with my second place here, it’s amazing,” Lazkano said. “It’s very special and beautiful to finish on the podium of a race like this. It’s not the Tour of Flanders but you know how important they are for the Belgian people.”
Lazkano defied expectations and made his breakthrough with a barnstorming ride over the cobbles, first making the breakaway and then surviving as it whittled down over the cobbles and climbs in the Flemish Ardennes. He formed a scintillating partnership with Alexander Kristoff (Uno-X) to go deep into the finale and it looked momentarily like they might just stay away to contest the win.
However, despite being rounded upon by the eight-man group of favourites, Lazkano went again, somehow finding the strength to go after a Neilson Powless attack and hold him – and the bunch – off in the final metres.
“The big objective for us is in these races to get in the break – just getting ahead of the bunch is a big moment, and quite often, being ahead you don’t spend as much energy as you would in the bunch with the whiplash effect. So that was the idea, to get in the break, I got in the break and I felt good.
“When they caught us, I saw lots of attacks going and I saw there were two guys from each team, I saw that Powless went for it at 3km to go and I thought I’d got to give it everything I have.
“No one had any power left. The people coming from the chase group were also very tired. They are great riders but no one had anything left.”
Lazkano turned 23 in November and is riding his second season at the WorldTour level after catching Movistar’s eye during his first two seasons as a pro at the Spanish second-division squad Caja Rural.
His performance at Dwars door Vlaanderen may have come as a surprise to many, but inside his Movistar team,…
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