Saturday we’ll have the Omloop Nieuwsblad for both men and women, the first cobbles of the year, and usually a fun race. A race which usually favours heavier cobble-specialists and flandriens, the new crop of semi-sprinters also stand a chance.
This year it will be hard to look past Mathieu van der Poel, Paul Magnier, and Tim Wellens who’ve shown excellent form. But others - like Brennan, Pidcock, van Aer, de Lie, Turner, and Philipsen - will surely also be in the mix.
The favourite won in his standard manner, but otherwise, it has been half cycling, half bowling game... (Van Aert was lucky not to come!) The Tudor rider who fell at the beginning of the cobblestone wall kept his hands on his bike instead of using them for protection, so he attempted to eat the cobbles with his face and left his teeth on the ground.
Kudos to Renard (Cofidis) who was part of the breakaway who was caught by Van der Poel and his 2 followers: after he and 2 other breakawaymen followed the VdP trio for a while, they were in big trouble when cobbled mounts came and they were dropped; and the Cofidis rider looked more in trouble than the others. Yet they all managed to stay in the group which caught them and Renard produce an honest sprint after 160 km at the front, which made him enter the top-10.
F. Vermeersch (UAE) is a good comrade, the Bora rider not quite. Vermeersch relayed everyone without complaining; does it explain his collection of podium places with (almost) no victory?
This race was a complete failure for many teams (due to crashes or not):
- first FDJ rider : 28^th^,
- first Lidl-Trek rider : 36^th^,
- first Ineos rider : 37^th^,
- and several other teams with similarly crappy results.