RadioShack’s Fabian Cancellara used his talents to perfection in winning the 2103 Tour of Flanders one-day cycling classic, a brutal 256-km bashing over cobblestones and up 17 climbs, some with grades over 20 percent.
Cancellara, a four-time world time trial champion and winner both the Paris-Roubaix and Tour of Flanders classics—two of the toughest cycling races in the world—waited until the final fifteen kilometers before attacking.
Only one rider, Peter Sagan of Cannondale, could keep up with the RadioShack rider, but Cancellara had his strategy perfected: on the penultimate climb, the Oude de Kwaremont, he pushed Sagan almost to the breaking point, and on the next climb, the increasingly steepening Paterberg, Cancellara kicked hard, dropping Sagan.
Once he had his gap, Cancellara simply dropped into his time-trial mode and accelerated non-stop to the end of the course. After 245 kilometers of hard racing, the big Swiss rider had enough in his legs to hit fifty kph, opening a gap of 1:26 over Sagan by the finish line.
“The goal was to win,” Cancellara told Eurosport.com after the race. “Sometimes you can’t predict how things are coming—I mean one year ago I was on the ground [he crashed in the 2012 race, breaking his collarbone] and now I m back. I won Flanders on the new course.
“It was a strange race,” he continued. “It was fast in the beginning and we had to work hard. We had to take over the race early, and I think that was the key: to do it because there were not so many left in the end. Everyone did a great job—the team did fantastic.
“In the end we came to Kwaremont. Everyone expected that I would go—I tried to make the first selection [the first big narrowing of the field to a few riders] because I had this nice feeling today that on the cobble I can go.
“I suffered on all the asphalt climbs but on the cobbles—I don’t know; somehow I have a special love for them and I went. Peter came with me after Jürgen on Paterberg, and in the end I did what I had to do—bring the Ronde van Vlanderren home.”
Cannondale’s young phenomenon Peter Sagan rode a strong race; he was beaten by only one rider, the master of the course, so there is no shame in second (and it is a significant improvement over his fifth-place finish of 2012.) Third went to Jürgen Roelandts of Lotto-Belisol, who had launched his own solo attack 18 km from the finish.
2012 winner Tom Boonen never figured in the race. The Omega Pharma-Quickstep rider crashed heavily after only 20 km of racing. Boonen’s left elbow and right knee were cut badly enough to require stitches, plus the Dutch rider sustained severe contusions on his left hip and right knee. Luckily he didn’t break any bones, but the severity of his injuries means he will likely miss next weekend’s Paris-Roubaix classic.
