Wout van Aert and Christophe Laporte are making a habit of processions like these. There was a disarming sense of déjà vu at Gent-Wevelgem as the Jumbo-Visma pair conjured a reprise of the long-distance, two-up effort that netted them victory at E3 Harelbeke a year ago.
Back then, the leadership hierarchy dictated that Van Aert would cross the line first. This time, the Belgian was content to yield victory to his teammate, but that was a mere detail. The chilling effect on the rest of the peloton was exactly the same here when they cruised away on the second ascent of the Kemmelberg with some 55km still to race.
The gradient grazes 16% on the cobbles of the Kemmelberg, but Van Aert and Laporte betrayed few signs of duress as they pressed inexorably clear. The men behind them, by contrast, rode as though they were trying to clamber their way up the down escalator. By the summit, the Jumbo-Visma duo already had ten seconds in hand, and the gap yawned out thereafter.
Van Aert performed the bulk of the pace-making, stretching their lead beyond a minute by the time they circled around for the final haul up the Kemmelberg with 35km. Even without the driving rain and low cloud that obscured the plat pays along the Franco-Belgian border on Sunday afternoon, the chasers would have struggled to catch a glimpse of Van Aert and Laporte for the final hour of racing. By the time they rolled across the line in Wevelgem, their lead was just shy of two minutes.
“It’s just an incredible way to finish off a great classic like Gent-Wevelgem,” Van Aert said when he arrived in the mixed zone afterwards, wrapped carefully against the cold. “Riding together to the finish line is just incredible, and it’s almost hard to believe that we did it again.”
There have been striking collective flexes at the Classics in previous generations, of course, but Jumbo-Visma somehow appear to conjure up exhibitions like this as a matter of routine. As well as their crushing E3 display last year, after all, Van Aert and Laporte had also joined Primož Roglič in a similar three-up effort at Paris-Nice.
Laporte’s victory here was also the team’s fourth Classic win of the current season after Dylan van Baarle and Tiesj Benoot split the honours at Opening Weekend, and Van Aert outsprinted Mathieu van der Poel and Tadej Pogačar in Harelbeke on Friday.
“It’s an incredible Classics season so far for us as a team,” said Van Aert. “It’s really great how we ride this season and…
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