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Jonas Vingegaard triumphed at the Volta a Catalunya as he continued his strong start to the season, while Brady Gilmore sprinted to a surprise stage seven victory. Vingegaard topped the general classification 1min 22sec ahead of France’s Lenny Martinez and a further eight seconds ahead of Germany’s Florian Lipowitz.
Gilmore, racing with the retired football great Andrés Iniesta’s NSN team, edged out Dorian Godon and Remco Evenepoel in a thrilling bunch sprint finale. Sunday’s 95km final stage took in seven circuits of Montjuïc in Barcelona, where the Tour de France will start in July.
Vingegaard, who was the race favourite in his first participation, took control in the Pyrenees with stage five and six solo victories. The Dane, who also won two stages and the overall title at Paris-Nice earlier this month, is planning a Giro d’Italia and Tour de France double assault later in the year. “We won two stages and now the GC, it’s been a really good week and we’re super happy with it,” said Vingegaard. “It’s been an amazing start to the year for me and I hope I can keep it going.
“I feel very good at the moment, my shape is very good [but] not the very best yet – we made a plan this year to progressively get better over the year. I’m pretty sure I still have more in me.”
Godon, who won two sprint stages in the race, seemed set to grab a third but Gilmore edged him over the line. “In the end maybe I was just too confident, there was another rider who came from behind and nabbed it,” said Godon, who won the points jersey. “Still a good week but disappointing today.”
Evenepoel, who crashed earlier in the week and then cracked on the first uphill finish to scupper his chances of overall victory, frequently tried to attack but the Belgian Red Bull rider had to settle for third on the day’s podium.
Philipsen kicks to win In Flanders Fields
The Belgian sprinter Jasper Philipsen won the In Flanders Fields one-day cobbled classic race in Belgium after breakaway riders Mathieu van der Poel and Wout van Aert were caught with a kilometre to go.
Just two days after Van der Poel held off four chasers after a 40km solo break to win the E3 Saxo Classic race, the Dutchman and his old rival Van Aert came up just one kilometre short of another stunning escape.
Having gone clear with 36km to ride, the pair were caught 4km from the finish by a counterattack from Alec Segaert before the peloton swallowed them up with 1,000m to race. Van der Poel’s Alpecin-Premier Tech teammate Philipsen had the strongest kick for the line, with Tobias Lund Andresen in second and Van Aert’s Visma-Lease a Bike partner Christophe Laporte taking third.
It was agonisingly close for Van der Poel and Van Aert – two one-day classics specialists and longtime rivals – after 240km of a race known as Gent-Wevelgem until it was renamed this year In Flanders Fields: From Middelkerke to Wevelgem. Van Aert lit up the race with around 57km to ride on the tough, cobbled Kemmelberg climb, bursting out of the peloton and taking Van der Poel and Florian Vermeersch with him. The trio caught the earlier breakaway riders and formed a lead group of nine which built a lead of more than 40 seconds on the peloton.
The next time they tackled the Kemmelberg with 36km left, Van der Poel put in a searing acceleration, with only Van Aert able to follow and Vermeersch shipping 10 seconds by the summit, with the peloton cresting a minute back.
It was then a simple pursuit to the finish, with Vermeersch stuck in no man’s land, until he was swallowed up by the group with 12km to go. The fast-finishing peloton closed to within 10 seconds of the leading duo with about six kilometres to go. Segaert counterattacked out of the peloton and even caught the pair with 4km left. He then kicked for home on his own as the trio were finally caught with a kilometre to race but it was to be the sprinter’s day.
