These days, the cobbled Classics seem to be following an unnervingly straightforward formula. Of the 175 riders who race around the Flemish Ardennes all day, in the end, a rider from Jumbo-Visma always wins.
After Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne, the E3 Saxo Classic and Gent-Wevelgem, the Dutch squad notched up their fifth cobbled win of the year at Dwars door Vlaanderen, as Christophe Laporte delivered an almost matter-of-fact attack 4km outside Waregem to solo to victory.
For much of the afternoon, the shortest cobbled Classic had danced to its traditionally brisk beat. The decisive eight-man move waltzed clear on the Knokteberg with 54km to go, with Neilson Powless (EF Education-EasyPost) producing a virtuoso display to take third his debut on this terrain and early escapee Oier Lazkano (Movistar) improvising his way to second.
When the music stopped, however, Jumbo-Visma, as ever, were seated comfortably in first place, with Tiesj Benoot helping to keep time in the winning break before his teammate Laporte stepped forward to deliver the grand finale.
Despite the depth of the breakaway, which also contained the Groupama-FDJ pairing of Stefan Küng and Valentin Madouas, another Jumbo-Visma victory felt somehow inevitable as the afternoon drew on. The only question appeared to be how they would go about it.
At Gent-Wevelgem on Sunday, Laporte was gifted victory by his teammate Wout van Aert after their two-up break. Here, the Frenchman reached out and seized it for himself, opting to surge clear with 4km remaining rather than wait for a sprint where he would have been the favourite in any case.
“If I didn’t go alone, maybe another move would have gone,” Laporte explained when he took a seat in the press room afterwards. “I could have waited, but I think the other guys didn’t want to come with me to the sprint. I knew I can do also a good effort with 2 or 3k to go, I did it already in the past, so it was a good move in the end.”
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In recent times, every Jumbo-Visma move seems to be a good one, everything they try seems to come off. Like in last year’s Tour de France, when they took six stage wins as well as the final overall victory and the green jersey, the team appears to have forgotten how to lose.
“It’s a nice feeling, for sure,” Laporte said. “But when you are on the bike you are never sure of what you will do. You cannot say, ‘I will attack and there will only be a few guys on the…
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