Home > News

Alexander Kristoff wins his second Monument at the Tour of Flanders

Alexander Kristoff
April 5, 2015
Share on SMS

Norwegian rider Alexander Kristoff (Katusha) won his second Classic Monument in a thrilling Tour of Flanders on Sunday. Last year’s Milan-San Remo champion, Kristoff wouldn’t let his breakmate Niki Terpstra (The Netherlands/Etixx-QuickStep) come around him after 264-km arduous kilometres in Belgium.

A seven-man breakaway scooted away after a few failed attempts and one of the escapees, Irishman Matt Brammeier of MTN-Qhubeka, won his weight in Steene Molen beer 34-km into the course. The septet rolled up a 7:00 gap before it reached the first hellingen, the Tiegemberg. Bradley Wiggins (Great Britain/Sky) crashed in the peloton but carried on grimly, though not immediately at the front where his team led along with IAM and Etixx-QuickStep.

There was a horrible moment when a neutral Shimano service car hit fugitive Jesse Sergent of Trek, sending the Kiwi to the hospital with a broken collarbone. The escape continued on as a sextet.

Meanwhile, the women’s race was heating up. Elisa Borghini Longo (Italy/Wiggle) soloed off the front and a high-powered chase couldn’t bring her back. One chase rider who didn’t have to work was Wiggle’s Belgian Jolien D’Hoore–winner of the first World Cup race Ronde van Drenthe–but she took the sprint for second. Anna van der Breggen (The Netherlands/Rabobank-Liv) rounded out the podium. Canada’s Joëlle Numainville (Bigla) was 14th, her second best placing of the season.

With 79-km to go, two fugitives separated themselves from the others on the Kaperij. As Lars Bak (Denmark/Lotto-Soudal) and Damien Gaudin (France/Ag2r) ground it out at the nose of the race and a chase began to form out of the peloton, another Shimano car bashed into the back of FDJ’s team car, enraging Mark Madiot and knocking Sébastian Chavanel (France) to the pavement and out of the race. Twitter exploded with indignation before settling into dark humour.

By the time the Franco-Danish alliance hit the first pairing of the Oude Kwaremont and Paterberg with 56-km to go, its lead was only 47-seconds, as Sky continued to labour on the sharp end of the peloton. The duo survived the cobbled 1.5-km of the Kwaremont; however, after the short but very steep (12.9%) Paterberg, Gaudin was the last escapee standing.

Gaudin was caught before the fearsome cobbled Koppenberg (600-metres, 11.6%) at the 44-km to go mark. Positioning for the foot of the climb was key. German sprinter André Greipel (Lotto-Soudal) bolted before the road tilted up. The Gorilla made it to the top alone before he was hauled back. But he attacked again with Sylvain Chavanel (France/IAM) in pursuit of Alexey Lutsenko (Kazakhstan/Astana) on the Mariaborrestraat cobbles.

On the two hills following the cobbles, Lutsenko found company in Greg van Avermaet (Belgium/BMC) and Lampre’s Portuguese national champion Nelson Oliveira. With the arrival of 25 chasers, it looked like the main selection of the race with the final pairing of the Oude Kwaremont and Paterberg remaining. Lotto-Soudal, BMC, Giant-Alpecin and Etixx were well represented.

The Kwaremont-Paterberg duo started with 18-km remaining and ended with 13-km to go. Terpstra and Three Days of Panne winner Kristoff shuffled off the front 10-km away from the two hellingen. Sky chased but the two leaders hit the foot of the Kwaremont with a 28-second lead. Geraint Thomas (Great Britain/Sky) and Zdeněk Štybar (Czech Republic/Etixx) started to bridge over, drawing ten others. Kristoff and Terpstra survived and their gap, which had shrunk on the Kwaremont, reinflated on the road leading to the Paterberg, with Štybar marking all the moves in the chase.

Again, the leading duo carried on after the final test of the Paterbeg, but van Avermaet and Peter Sagan (Slovakia/Tinkoff-Saxo) became the main chase. Eighteen seconds was Kristoff and Terpstra’s gap with 10-km to go. Van Avermaet and Sagan only had seven seconds ahead of the nine other chasers. In the tense run-in to the finishing town of Oudenaarde, the gap between the break and the chase increased, as did the time between the chase and the little peloton.

Terpstra, afraid of Kristoff’s sprinting prowess, started to take shorter pulls. The gamesmanship drew van Avermaet and Sagan closer. Kristoff tightened his shoes. As van Avermaet drew towards them, Kristoff held off Terpstra with ease. With two triumphs in a week and podiums in Milan-San Remo, Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne and the Tour of Qatar, the Norwegian is having a fantastic season.

Canadians Hugo Houle (Ag2r) and Antoine Duchesne (Europcar) were 94th and 118th respectively.

2015 Tour of Flanders
1) Alexander Kristoff (Norway/Katusha) 6:26:38
2) Niki Terpstra (The Netherlands/Etixx-QuickStep) s.t.
3) Greg van Avermaet (Belgium/BMC) +0:07

Categories: News |