The Tour of Flanders & Dwars Door Vlaanderen | The Cycling Race News Show

It’s been another big week in the World of professional racing. The second of the season’s five monuments took place yesterday in the form of the Tour of Flanders, we shall be focussing on that, but we’ll also be dipping into the GP Miguel Indurain, Dwars Door Vlaanderen, and the Volta Limburg Classic.

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For me it's the most exciting period of racing for the year. The cobbled classics week, which we are currently celebrating with a whole host of related content here on GCN, kicked off on Sunday with the Ronde, and the Belgians go mad for it for a whole week leading up to the race.

The Two Hundred and sixty four kilometres, described by debutant Vincenzo Nibali, as six hours of stress and concentration, took the men's race from the start in Antwerp to the finish in Oudenaarde, over the famous flemish bergs and kasseien.

It took a full seventy kilometers of constant attacking for the early eleven rider breakaway to finally establish itself. They gained a maximum advantage of only around five minutes, leaving them little hope of making it deep into the race.

For many of the favourites, the biggest obstacle appeared to be trying to stay upright. Michael Valgren crashed hard, so did Sep Vanmarcke and Oliver Naesen, twice each. The twitchiness of the peloton combined with wet, slippery roads made for a particularly nervous race.

The first big move came with just over fifty kilometres remaining. Dutch duo of Dylan Van Baarle and Sebastian Langeveld, along with Danish Duo Mads Pedersen and Magnus Cort Nielson, launched an attack from what remained of the bunch, and soon caught what remained of the breakaway. They soon built up a fourty second advantage, and with a distinct lack of domestiques left to work behind, it was a dangerous move.

The crunch point of the race, though, came just over the top of the Kruisbergen out of Ronse with twenty seven kilometres to go An initial acceleration by Zdenek Stybar was countered by Milan Sanremo winner Vincenzo Nibali, and for a fleeting moment you just wondered whether the shark would pull off the impossible for a second time. However, the dream was shattered as he was caught and dropped by Niki Terpstra.

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Watch more on GCN...
The 5 Toughest Climbs In Flanders 📹 http://gcn.eu/5hardestflanders

Photos: © Velo Collection (TDW) / Getty Images & © Bettiniphoto / http://www.bettiniphoto.net/

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