#1: Demi Vollering. That is all.
Since Vollering’s attack yesterday left us all scrambling for superlatives (“gobsmacking” is all I’ve got currently), I’ll let the numbers do the talking:
Only 16 men rode the last Kwaremont faster than Demi Vollering.
Remco Evenepoel, who placed third in this year’s men’s edition, did it in 3:30 on his final ascent. Vollering climbed it in 3:32.
Pauline Ferrand-Prévot, who outrode Puck Pieterse (Fenix Premier-Tech) in a two-way sprint to secure her second Flanders runner-up spot, commended her Tour de France rival.
“I was not strong enough to follow Demi on the Oude Kwaremont, so I just can be happy with how we raced as a team also. The girls did a really amazing job. I feel quite happy to be second today because it was just impossible to do better,” said the Visma-Lease a Bike rider.
Food for thought: Last year, Pauline Ferrand-Prévot had a stronger Classics campaign than Vollering, and the Frenchwoman went on to dominate in the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift. Given Vollering’s show of form yesterday, how does this bode for August?
Demi Vollering accelerated up the final climb, away from the front group (Image credit: Getty images)
#2: More bad luck for Le Court and Reusser
It’s been difficult to watch Kim Le Court’s misfortune this spring, which sadly continued at yesterday’s race.
A plucky Le Court (AG Insurance-Soudal) spoke to Rouleur at the start about how she was recovering well from her injuries following Milan-Sanremo, where she sustained a contusion to ribs and a hairline fracture in a horrific crash descending the Cipressa. The Mauritian rider was eager to make her mark after a turbulent start to the season.
She said: “There’s been very bad luck, so we’re hopefully turning it around today. It’s been a bit painful, but I had a really easy week last week just to try and wake up the engine. The plan is to win, of course. Nothing else. But we really had a lot of bad luck in the Classics as a team, and myself recently, and hopefully we can turn it around today.”
But as a difficult headwind caused the peloton to become bunched with little room for manoeuvre, Le Court’s luck took a turn for the worse. The 30-year-old was caught in a crash with just over 40km to go, and by the evening it was confirmed she had broken a wrist.
Le Court and Reusser were caught in a crash in the lead up to the Koppenberg, a decisive climb (Image credit: SWpix.com)
Marlen Reusser (Movistar) also went down, sustaining a fractured lumbar vertebra. The crash will be a huge blow to Movistar and an even bigger disappointment for their leader, who had only just returned to the saddle in the midweek Dwars van Vlaanderen after a crash at the UAE Tour in February. Until Sunday’s incident, Reusser looked to be in flying form, leading the bunch into Molenberg with the same kind of aggression that saw her outsprint Vollering at Dwars.
Food for thought: If Reusser was still in the race over the Koppenberg, would Vollering have won so convincingly?
#3: A tough day at work for SD Worx
All eyes were on Kopecky as she looked to take her second Monument victory this year and defend the title of her home race. But it wasn’t meant to be for the Milan-Sanremo winner, whose team were left in disorder after Lorena Wiebes was caught in a crash early on.
Wiebes’ performances this season, including her near-flawless In Flanders Field win, have shown not only her versatility as a rider but also how crucial she is for Kopecky. So when the Dutch national champion and Kopecky’s right-hand man was caught in a crash early on, it would certainly have been difficult for the team to recover, especially in a race scenario as fragile as the lead into the Koppenberg. The Belgian was forced to sprint to fourth.
Speaking to the media after the race, SD Worx-Protime rider Mischa Bredewold tried to make sense of the chaos: "I don't know what happened with Lorena on the Koppenberg, it was not clear for me if she had a mechanical or she just couldn't follow. I think that's an important card for us to miss in the final like this.
“Lotte and I were feeling quite good. We quite quickly made a call to not attack and save myself so I could fix whatever would happen. I tried to put Lotte in a good position for the Kwaremont, and actually I just came short of following in that group, so I'm not sure if that was the right call.”
Bredewold led Kopecky into the Kwaremont (Image credit: SWpix.com)
Food for thought: It might have been that Kopecky couldn’t quite hold onto the front group over Flanders’ notoriously steep climbs, but Roubaix is basically flat. Could it be a different story next week? And if Wiebes is fit after yesterday, which card will SD Worx play?
