Tour of Flanders - Spoilers

[trener1]

Man this isn't your daddy's racing, I mean 100k to go and they are blowing this up like thee are 20k to go, unreal!

[GregL]

With WVA out, the other teams can focus on Alpecin/MvdP. This may open the door for Lidl-Trek and Visma to throw in lots of attacks. My head still says MvdP, but my heart is rooting for Jorgenson.

Greg

[BryanE]

Tough break for Garcia.

[Clean39T]

Flipped on Tiz right as MDVP finished (spoiled myself.. doh!) -- then rewound to watch his move -- but the feed died and I didn't see what happened to Jorgenson? Did he crash or just blow up? Great top-ten for Tom Skweeendge.

[LegendRider]

Originally Posted by Clean39T

Flipped on Tiz right as MDVP finished (spoiled myself.. doh!) -- then rewound to watch his move -- but the feed died and I didn't see what happened to Jorgenson? Did he crash or just blow up? Great top-ten for Tom Skweeendge.

Jorgenson blew up.

[nalax]

How do you beat SDworx? Ride like Lidltrek or the GOAT and Kasia.

[reuben]

The last 30-40k of the women's race was great. I was rooting for Shirin, but I would have been happy with any of the top three being on the top step.

[72gmc]

I have nothing against Elisa but I was really hoping for either Shirin or Kasia.

[rice rocket]

Are spectators getting worse? Or am I just noticing it more?

[Xrslug]

Originally Posted by LegendRider

Jorgenson blew up.

Jorgenson almoooost made it across to MVDP and then slowly got sucked back into the chasing group and then out the back. Riley Sheehan continues to impress. Makes me wonder if there are currently other riders in the US crit scene who can ride at this level and just haven’t been given a shot. Going from the US crit scene to placing 13th at Tour of Flanders is pretty mind blowing.

[Hilltopwalters]

Now that was a race. Just caught Flo's 20min highlight reel. Definitely want to go back and watch the whole thing. MvdP is a beast. Wout was certainly missed. But a great race overall.

[fried bake]

Good thing ELB won cause dragging Kasia to her teammate probably wasn’t the best strategy. Gotta wonder how Shirin feels about that result.


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[nooneline]

Originally Posted by fried bake

Good thing ELB won cause dragging Kasia to her teammate probably wasn’t the best strategy. Gotta wonder how Shirin feels about that result.


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Bet she's fine with it. She clearly wasn't staying away solo, and ELB had to do as much damage to SDW as possible.

[fried bake]

What do you mean she clearly wasn’t staying away solo? She had a strong teammate to disrupt a chase which contained the top sprinter and on form rider (Vos) and the SDWorx riders who were either on bad day (Kopecky) or had done a ton of donkey’s work chasing the winning move. All of those factors clearly favored her apart from the fact that she was also clearly in good form. You might recall she won Trofeo Alfredo Binda in the exact manner just a year ago.

[nooneline]

Originally Posted by fried bake

What do you mean she clearly wasn’t staying away solo? She had a strong teammate to disrupt a chase which contained the top sprinter and on form rider (Vos) and the SDWorx riders who were either on bad day (Kopecky) or had done a ton of donkey’s work chasing the winning move. All of those factors clearly favored her apart from the fact that she was also clearly in good form. You might recall she won Trofeo Alfredo Binda in the exact manner just a year ago.

She had been dropped earlier; yeah, her move was super strong, but going up the Paterberg saw her lead cut in half. I wanted her to stay away solo but halfway up the P'berg it looked unlikely - frankly I was surprised that ELB and KW didn't blow right by her. Her lead was down to <15 seconds to Kopecky et al on the Paterberg (from what, 25 seconds at its peak a little bit earlier?), and they wound up pulling the ELB/SVA/KW trio back to 9 seconds by the finish.

I was initially surprised that ELB went so hard at the top of the Paterberg, but I figured that Lidl-Trek knew more about what was going on in the race than I did in the moment*, and so here's why upon consideration it seemed like the right call: ELB had to go hard up the P'berg - Niewiadoma was looking really strong and SDWorx were on the ropes. At that point, Lidl-Trek's best option is to have ELB twist the knife on SDWorx and try to bury them, to join SVA and put as much distance between them and SDWorx as possible. Because if ELB sat back, two things become more likely: one is that KW makes it to SVA and it's 1-on-1 instead of 2-on-1. The other is that the Paterberg and its aftermath is easier on a struggling SDWorx and since they have numbers behind, they mount a chase and pull back SVA. Sure, you have ELB ready to go, but you're still rolling the dice against Lotte Kopecky and Demi Vollering (and Marianne Vos too!) and wishing that you put 20 seconds into them on the Paterberg when you had the chance.

*At the end of the day, Lidl-Trek went 1st and 3rd in a monument, so it's hard to argue that their tactics were bad. So I tried to look at that situation as "Why is this good for them, even if it surprised me in the moment?"