One week before the Tour of Flanders, the Jumbo-Visma steamroller is in great shape. The French rider Christophe Laporte indeed won the wind classic this Sunday, on an offering from the Belgian Wout Van Aert, second. Despite terrible weather, a mixture of violent gusts and incessant rain, the two men did not hesitate to brave the elements and get out of the peloton 55 kilometers from the finish. They crossed the line hand in hand, two minutes ahead of their first pursuer, the Belgian Sep Vanmarcke.
By choosing not to compete in the sprint, Van Aert offered victory to his teammate, who thus became the fourth Frenchman to win this Flemish classic after Jacques Anquetil, Bernard Hinault and Philippe Gaumont in 1997. line, Wout asked me if I wanted to win, says Christophe Laporte. He knew my answer: when I started my career, I was aiming to win a stage in the Tour de France and a great classic. Today I realize a childhood dream. “And even two in a few months after his success in Cahors last summer on the Grande Boucle.
“Everything was under control”
The difficult Mount Kemmel acted as a justice of the peace this Sunday, Van Aert placing an already decisive acceleration on the second of three cobbled ascents of this giant of Flanders. Only Laporte, second here a year earlier behind the Eritrean Biniam Girmay, managed to keep up with the hellish pace set by his leader. The race was played, the gap widening rapidly, and even exceeding two minutes.
“It was not the plan initially developed but we quickly saw that everything was under control as our two guys seemed strong,” said Maarten Wijnants, the Dutch team’s sporting director. As in 2022 at the E3 Classic, when the two men presented themselves arm in arm on the line at Harelbeke, Van Aert, who had already won at Wevelgem in 2021, offered this prestigious success to Laporte “who deserved it, back from a difficult start to the season after falling ill”.
Ineos’ Dirty Sunday
“Redoing the stunt of E3, it’s incredible. It’s normally the kind of feat that you only achieve once in a career, ”commented Christophe Laporte, thanking his leader, “unquestionably the strongest” this Sunday. The Jumbo-Visma team thus gets its hands on the Flanders spring with major successes at Het Nieuswlad (Dylan van Baarle), Kuurne-Bruxelles-Kuurne (Tiesj Benoot), E3 (Van Aert) and therefore Wevelgem .
With a third podium in three one-day races, after his second place at Milan-San Remo and his success at Harelbeke, where he had dominated the Dutchman Mathieu van der Poel and the Slovenian Tadej Pogacar, Wout Van Aert is carving out a men’s suit to beat at the Ronde then at Paris-Roubaix on April 9, two monuments which are strangely missing from his impressive list of winners. Unlike Jumbo-Visma, the Ineos team had a nightmarish day: before halfway, the Italian Filippo Ganna (who made Paris-Roubaix his spring goal) and Michal Kwiatkowski found themselves at the ground and were forced to retire. The Pole, 2014 world champion, seemed the most affected with a strong suspicion of a fractured left clavicle.