Olympic champion Greg van Avermaet completed a 48-hour cobbled classic double on Sunday by winning the Gent-Wevelgem.
The 31-year-old edged out Belgian compatriot Jens Keukeleire of Orica-Scott in a two-up sprint finish to the 249km 79th edition of the race, just two days after also winning the E3 Harelbeke for the second time.
It was Van Avermaet’s third win on the cobbles in the past month having also won February’s Omloop Het Nieuwsblad.
Photo: AFP
It sets up the BMC rider as clear favorite for the weekend’s Tour de Flandres, the second high-profile “Monument” race of the season, where he has already finished second in 2014 and third a year later.
“I can’t hide it any longer, I will without a doubt be the man to beat — the favorite,” Van Avermaet said. “I didn’t think I could win this course which is suited to pure sprinters. I was audacious and that created an ideal situation for me.”
Van Avermaet has never won a “Monument” race, despite being one of his generation’s best cobbled one-day classics specialists, but he goes into the two major objectives of his season over the next two weekends — Flandres and then Paris-Roubaix — brimming with confidence and in the form of his life.
Van Avermaet will be eager to make amends for his Flandres disaster last season when he broke his collarbone in a crash with four teammates, failing to finish the race and then missing Paris-Roubaix, but since coming back to racing, the former nearly-man has enjoyed the best period of his life, winning Olympic gold in Rio de Janeiro after holding the Tour de France maillot jaune for three days last year.
He will face stiff competition in Flandres from world champion Peter Sagan of Bora-Hansgrohe, who took third place in Wevelgem, a few seconds back after outsprinting 2014 Paris-Roubaix winner Niki Terpstra of Quick-Step Floors.
Sagan, who came second to Van Avermaet at the Omloop Het Nieuswblad, won both Gent-Wevelgem and Flandres last year, but he was angry with Terpstra, who he felt refused to help chase down the lead duo.
“Terpstra rode more to make me lose the race than to try to win it himself,” the Slovak said.
Van Avermaet had opened hostilities with 35km left with an attack on Mont Kemmel that was originally followed only by Sagan.
Several further attacks resulted in a two-man lead group with three chasers — Sagan, Terpstra and Denmark’s Soren Kragh Andersen of Team Sunweb — but they failed to work together effectively.
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