(start clock beeping)
(start clock rings)
(men cheering)
- Coming up this week on the GCN Racing News Show,
five things we learned from the Tour of Flanders
including a monumental cockup from GCN,
even by our own low standards.
We've also got the Dwars door Vlaanderen,
the continued emergence of a bright young
American talent at the at the Giro Di Sicilia plus,
we've actually got a race that I competed in
the Battle on the Beach.
It was the the first cobbled monument of the year,
the Ronde, and the first thing we learnt
is that we're getting even worse at predictions.
That's right, not only did we not predict
Alberto Bettiol to win, we didn't even name check him.
Even by our standards that is poor,
and in fact it was pointed out to us pre-race
in the comments section by Evert Borghraef.
There we go, yes, perhaps we should have taken the
advice of Jan Willem Kuilenburg.
He said 'if you would have had some more beers
you could have mentioned the complete peleton',
which is a very good point actually,
and there will be an extra long Paris-Roubaix
preview show coming right up for you this week.
Either way, it was a phenomenal victory for
the 25-year-old of EF, Education First.
Here is what his colleagues had to say to Lloydy
after the race starting with Team Manager
Jonathan Vaughters.
- JV, congratulations, that must have felt like
a long time coming.
- Yeah, for sure, I mean what is it 15 years or something
big, I mean back when you were riding for us.
Yeah, I mean - Where we had no chance.
- Right, exactly, where we had no chance.
No, yeah, I mean it was a,
it was a really beautiful victory for a guy that
really deserves it, you know, that went through a
really rough year last year with a lot of crashes
and injuries and came back and you know,
just beautiful teamwork all the way around,
a lot of sacrifice from everyone involved,
from you know, Sep Vanmarcke and Sebastian Langeveld and,
I mean what can you say
I think it's, we were debating
if it's the most beautiful win of this organization
since it began and it's like 2011 Roubaix or this one.
And it's tough, I don't know
we've won every monument except Milan-San Remo, dammit
but this one, I think this one's number one.
- That's cause it was about an hour ago,
of course it's gonna feel number one. (laughs)
- I know, I know, I know.
- Andy, your entire cycling career
has been about the Tour of Flanders, and today
you've won it with Alberto,
that must feel pretty special.
- Yes, absolutely.
I mean I wasn't in doubt that he can drop everybody,
I just wasn't sure if he can manage to hold off
a 10K group of, whatever how many
and I was very happy afterwards that he managed, yes.
I'm sure he's gonna have many more
victories in his career.
- Well this is the first one. (chuckles)
- Yeah, yeah I didn't know.
They said first pro victory.
- Matti you've been in some monument-winning teams before,
but I'm sure it doesn't get any worse when
you win the Tour of Flanders.
- Yeah I'm almost getting emotional here, it's incredible.
For sure.
I didn't expect it, I hoped for it and, yeah,
but for him to pull this out you know, it's amazing.
- And what about Sep because obviously he comes
into this race every year as one of the favorites,
this year he's had his problems but he rode his heart out
for somebody else today.
- Yeah, it just shows how much class he has.
I mean a couple of days ago
he couldn't even ride his bike still,
he showed how much he want this
and how much he loves this race
and for him as the normal road captain for us
kind of stepped down and helped Alberto
and made the difference.
Yeah, shows some character.
- How far will the celebrations go tonight?
- Full gas.
- Good man.
(Chuckles)
- Still hard to believe that his first pro win
was the Tour of Flanders.
Now clearly we didn't know an awful lot
about Alberto Bettiol before Sunday
and it seems we weren't the only ones.
Visits to his page on Pro Cycling Stats
are up 17,000 this week, but first up, he is 25,
which makes him the youngest Tour of Flanders
winner since Tom Boonen in 2005,
he was born in Poggibonsi, Tuscany
and now lives in nearby Castelfiorentino.
He turned pro in 2014 with Cannondale,
spent last year with BMC,
where most of his season was affected by injury,
and returned to EF this year.
He showed a lot of promise in 2016
taking second at the Bretagne Classic in Plouay
and finishing top ten at both
the Canadian one-day world tour races.
To be fair, his performances this year in Tirreno and E3
were more than enough to have warranted at least
a mention in our preview show.
We will never learn.
Well, hopefully we will actually.
- It's not often you get a crowd this size
outside the bus of a Pro Continental team,
but such is the furore around Mathieu van der Poel
and that incredible ride today
where he hit the deck, managed to get back
to the front and then start attacking again.
Not surprised if so many people so excited
about his prospects on the road.
- The crowds in Flanders and cycling in general
are loving Mathieu van der Poel
and it's easy to see why - just like Peter Sagan,
he makes riding a bike look effortless.
And not in that he's going blooming fast,
but also the fact that he does it
with incredible style, white shorts excepted.
Bike riding the van der Poel way
just looks like a heck of a lot of fun
and let's face it, we kinda need
more of that flamboyance in cycling.
Every kid that's into bike riding now
wants to be the next van der Poel
and he's gonna attract more participation
into road, cyclo-cross, and mountain biking,
and that's just brilliant!
His ride yesterday was nothing short of spectacular,
crashing on the run-in, to the second time
up the Oude Kwaremont, he managed to get himself
back to the coat-tails of the peloton,
ride past everyone to make the front group
at a time when the race was well and truly on,
then go faster than everyone
up the final climb of the Paterburg
before finally taking second
in the group sprint to finish fourth
in his first ever participation at the race.
It was the story of the day,
and whilst there wasn't a fairytale ending,
there almost didn't need to be.
At the other end of his career is Alejandro Valverde,
the world champion just 18 days before his 39th birthday,
made his debut at the Tour of Flanders yesterday.
And not a single person was surprised
that he managed to finish eighth.
His versatility really is remarkable.
He may not have set the world on fire yesterday,
but when you consider how important
road knowledge is deemed to be in Flanders,
that was an extremely impressive ride.
And according to Strava, he was also
the fastest up the Paterburg yesterday.
Now what was also evident to me yesterday
was just how much of an influence
he's had on his teammates' performances.
Movistar, normally most notable for their absence
in the finale of the Cobbled classics,
but yesterday, rallying around their leader;
they had a total of four riders in the top 50,
which is something they've never achieved before.
The Ronde as a race is bigger than it's ever been before,
there are more and more people on the roadside,
the VIP tents continue to get larger,
they have an increasingly international
television audience, but for the first time
since World War II, no Belgian rider
has won a one-day classic yet this year.
Now if that trend continues,
will that affect the Belgian classics?
Well, probably not, in the same way
that the Tour de France is bigger than ever
despite not having had a French winner
for over thirty years, but that said,
the celebration at the finish line
was perhaps slightly more muted yesterday.
The best Belgian finisher was Oliver Naesen
in seventh place; the only other time
that Belgium has failed to place a rider
in the top six was 1997, when Jo Plankaert was eighth.
Talking of future hopefuls, Man of the Match
for me yesterday had to be
Kasper Asgreen of Deceuninck-QuickStep.
He was one of four riders in the top eight
who were making their debut at the race
and he was the best of the lot, in second.
Now what made that performance even more exceptional
was how much work he had done along the way.
He did an enormous amount on the front of the group
after things split over the top of the Muur,
then got in a break with Vanmarcke,
Vandenburgh, and van Baarle,
and still found the strength
to attack the group of chasers in the last few kilometers.
Now Asgreen only turned pro with QuickStep
in April of last year, and he's already proven himself
as a potential monument winner.
And what more important weapon
in that team's seemingly never-ending arsenal of talent.
To be fair to our new recruit, Marty McDonald,
he did somewhat save our bacon when it came to predictions.
- Women's race, I'm gonna go for Marta Bastianelli.
Okay, so she's had a great start to the season.
- Thank goodness he absolutely nailed that one, didn't he?
To be fair, Lloydy's pick of Annemiek van Vleuten
was the runner-up and my pick of Chantal Blaak
was in seventh place, so not too bad all round.
As Marty said, Bastianelli had pinpointed
the Tour of Flanders as a race she could win
and would target this year.
Bastianelli has been the epitome of consistency this year,
she's not finished outside the top eight
in any of the ten Pro races that she's done.
Like the men's race, the winning move went
on the Oude Kwaremont, but rather than just one rider,
here we had four: Bastianelli, van Vleuten,
Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig, and Kasia Niewiadoma.
The Pole did lose contact on the Paterburg,
leaving the other three to share the podium places,
and really, from that point,
there was never a doubt as to who would win.
Bastianelli is one of the world's best sprinters,
and she actually took the win
relatively comfortably from van Vleuten.
Uttrup Ludwig had to settle for the last podium spot,
but it was yet another step up
for the 23-year-old, who continues to improve and impress.
Rewind a little further than Sunday,
and four days before the Tour of Flanders
came Dwars door Vlaanderen, which marked
van der Poel's second World Tour race, and his first win.
He was part of a five-man group that fought for victory
and such was his dominance in the final sprint
he was able to raise his arms in celebration
with about 50 meters still to go.
In the women's race, Ellen van Dijk made it
back-to-back wins for her,
the Trek-Segafredo rider attacked
with a little under 20Ks to go
and would never be seen again.
That was her first victory of 2019,
and came just after we'd said on the Flanders Preview Show
that she'd yet to take a win this year.
Pro riders, you know where we are, if you need us.
Last week also saw the return of the Giro di Sicilia
after 42 years of absence.
The four-day race saw Brandon McNulty
take another leap forward in his career,
the 21-year-old set up overall victory
with a dominant display on the penultimate day,
to Ragusa, under some pretty horrific conditions.
Attacking with 10Ks to go, McNulty showed strength
but also some pretty mean bike handling skills
to take the win by almost a minute.
The following day, he and his team
admirably defended the overall race lead,
McNulty therefore taking his first two
professional UCI wins in the space of two days.
Expect to see plenty more of him in the next few years.
In other news, Pete Kennaugh of Bora-Hansgrohe
has officially called time on his cycling career.
The Manxman put out an open, honest,
and heartfelt message on Instagram,
saying that he has been struggling
both on and off the bike for a number of years.
We here at GCN wish him well in his future endeavors.
Finally, our random Race of the Week,
and this was actually one that I was in!
Yes, that's right, the Battle on the Beach
takes place in South Wales, here in the UK,
and is three laps of a circuit which includes
five kilometers flat out down a beach
before looping back to the start
on a mixture of forest trails.
Bram Imming took his third victory at the race
from his teammate Hank Verdonk
and Welsh hill-climbing sensation Dan Evans,
and the women's race was won by young Harriet Harnden,
from Ffion James, and Terry Fremineur.
And finally this week, the results from our poll
from last week's show where we asked you
if you were fans of e-racing.
The results: 64% of you said that you are a fan of e-racing.
Now without a doubt, it is a discipline in cycling
that's gonna be here to stay.
Next week, we will be back with the Hell of the North,
Paris-Roubaix, and we've got a special treat
for those of you in the USA and Canada:
A one-hour program with full race highlights
over on Facebook with commentary from Dan
and expert analysis from multiple top-10 finisher,
Juan Antonio Flecha.
Oh yes, that's gonna be good.
You can catch it over on our Facebook page,
where you'll also be able to catch
shorter highlights of the Scheldeprijs on Wednesday.
The seven-day Tour of the Basque Country
also starts today, and if you're in Europe,
you'll be able to catch live daily coverage
on Eurosport, as the likes of Julian Alaphilippe,
Geraint Thomas, Adam Yates, Mikel Landa and Dan Martin
duke it out on the notoriously steep climbs
of that beautiful region of Spain.
Now stay tuned this coming Thursday
for our Paris-Roubaix preview show
with added beers, plus if you'd like something else
to watch in the meantime why not click down here
for my epic and very English bike ride
with US cyclo-cross star, Jeremy Powers.