The French Christophe Laporte won the victory in Ghent-Wevelgem after a new exhibition of the Jumbo-Visma team, which dominated at will a race that was in charge of dynamiting with 50 kilometers to go from the finish line the Belgian Wout van Aert, who gave up the victory to his teammate.
If last Friday Van Aert prevailed at the E3 Saxo Classic in a duel of giants with the Dutch Mathieu van der Poel and the Slovenian Tadej Pogacar, this Sunday the Belgian superstar did not hesitate to become a luxury “gregarious” for Christophe Laporte .
With fifty kilometers to go to the finish line, in the second pass over the Kemmelberg, a 1,400-meter wall with an average gradient of 6.6 percent and ramps of up to 13 percent, Van Aert destroyed the peloton with an impressive acceleration that only his teammate could hold.
Quite an exhibition of Jumbo-Visma, which hours before had scored the victory in the general classification of the Volta a Cataluña with the Slovenian Primoz Roglic, another of the stars of the Dutch team
It doesn’t matter if it’s a “big”, a staged round or a classic, like Ghent-Wevelgem, Jumbo-Visma’s hunger for victories seems insatiable.
As Wout van Aert made clear that Sunday, that after breaking the race he did not stop pulling and pulling until he reached a difference of more than two minutes with 18 kilometers to go to finish which ensured the victory for the riders of the Dutch team.
The question was whether Van Aert and Laporte would dispute the victory in the sprint or if Van Aert, as it finally happened, would give up the first step of the podium to the French cyclist, who added his first victory of the course.
After tackling the last few metres, Wout Van Aert left first place to Laporte, who applauded his teammate’s gesture, before stopping the clock with a time of 5h 49.39, almost two minutes less -1:56- than the third classified, the Belgian Sep Vanmarcke (Israe-Premier Tech), who won the sprint in the small group of chasers.
