Wout van Aert wins Gent-Wevelgem

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Wout van Aert (Jumbo-Visma) claimed his first classic of the season at Gent-Wevelgem from a seven-man sprint.

The Belgian was the quickest in a small group that was nevertheless made up of quality sprinters, with Giacomo Nizzolo (Qhubeka Assos) taking second and Matteo Trentin (UAE Team Emirates) third.

The seven riders had all been part of a group of around 20 riders that broke clear in windy conditions during the first half of the race.

After working well together, that group was reduced to nine on the second ascent of the Kemmelberg, featuring Van Aert, Nizzolo, Trentin, Michael Matthews (BikeExchange), Sonny Colbrelli (Bahrain Victorious), Stefan Küng (Groupama-FDJ), Danny van Poppel (Intermarché-Wanty Gobert) and Nathan Van Hooydonck (Jumbo-Visma). 

The dangerous sprint of Sam Bennett (Deceuninck-QuickStep) was taken out of contention during the flat run-in to the finish, when he appeared to be struck by a bout of illness. 

With Van Poppel also dropped, that left the seven remaining riders to contest the sprint at the finish, which, despite the calibre of sprinter in the group, was comfortably won by Van Aert by a bike-length. 

Van Aert was pleased to make this early split, but expressed at the finish how much work was required to keep them from being caught.

"It was a sprint at high speed, we had a tailwind all the way back from the Kemmelberg and we were able to launch early enough. Everything went perfect and nobody came past.

“As it was only a group of about 20 guys, we still had to do a lot of turns. It was a whole day in the crosswinds, they never stopped actually. It was a massive effort, but definitely worth it.”

Although the likes of Deceuninck-QuickStep and AG2R Citroën made efforts to get back into contention throughout the day, their star riders like Zdenek Štybar, Yves Lampaert, Greg Van Avermaet and Oliver Naesen all never recovered after missing out on the initial split. 

How it unfolded

The 83rd Gent-Wevelgem got under way without Trek-Segafredo and Bora-Hansgrohe, both of which had to pull out due to Covid-19 positives.

The 247km race began formulaically enough, with Stefan Bisseger, Jonas Rutsch (both EF Education Nippo), Yevgeniy Federov (Astana-Premier Tech), and Laurenz Rex (Bingoal Pauwels Sauces WB) forming the first break of the day.

However, things burst into life when a strong cross-tail wind ripped the race to pieces, and 21 riders went clear from the rest of the peloton.

The group included Sam Bennett (Deceuninck-QuickStep), Jasper De Buyst (Lotto Soudal), Danny van Poppel (Intermarché-Wanty Gobert), Wout van Aert (Jumbo-Visma), Nathan Van Hooydonck (Jumbo-Visma), Sonny Colbrelli (Bahrain Victorious), Jack Bauer (BikeExchange), Luka Mezgec (BikeExchange), Michael Matthews (BikeExchange), Robert Stannard (BikeExchange), Imanol Erviti (Movistar), Luis Mas (Movistar), Jasha Sütterlin (Movistar), Giacomo Nizzolo (Qhubeka Assos), Sven Erik Bystrøm (UAE Team Emirates), Matteo Trentin (UAE Team Emirates), Stefan Küng (Groupama-FDJ), Michal Golas (Ineos), Timothy Dupont (Bingoal-Wallonie Bruxelles), Jeremy Lecroq (B&B Hotels p/b KTM) and Cyril Lemoine (B&B Hotels).

They closed the seven-minute gap to the four earlier escapees, to form a new lead group of 25 riders.

The beginning of the climbs halfway into the race offered a springboard for riders in the second group to bridge up to the first, and on the Baneberg, Zdenek Stybar, Davide Ballerini (both Deceuninck-QuickStep), Luke Durbridge (BikeExchange) and Oscar Riesebeek (Alpecin-Fenix) attempted to do so.

After the first ascent of the Kemmelberg, Stybar, Durbridge and Riesebeek were joined by Yves Lampaert (Deceuninck-QuickStep), Søren Kragh Andersen (Team DSM), Gianni Vermeersch (Alpecin-Fenix) and Oliver Naesen (AG2R Citroën), to form a new chasing group of seven riders. 

These seven were caught by about a dozen more riders 76km from the finish, including Arnaud Démare (Groupama-FDJ) and Greg Van Avermaet (AG2R Citroën), and continued to get bigger as more riders such as John Degenkolb (Lotto Soudal) and Alexander Kristoff (UAE Team Emirates) caught back on. 

Despite its bigger size, these chasers began to lose ground on the leaders, with the deficit up to over one minute by the start of the Plugstreets. 

The work from teams like AG2R Citroën, Qhubeka Assos and Groupama-FDJ shed many of the weaker riders from the chasing group on the approach to the second ascent of the Kemmelberg, but they were still unable to make any inroads to the lead group, which was working together cohesively. 

On the Kemmelberg, the pace set by Van Aert reduced the lead group to just nine riders: Bennett, Matthews, Trentin, Colbrelli, Küng, Nizzolo, Van Poppel and Van Hooydonck. They pressed on, and by the time they returned to the Kemmelberg for the third and final ascent 36km from the finish, had a lead of one minute over the nearest chasing group.

Trentin set the pace on the Kemmelberg this time, but the nine-man group remained intact. 

Bennett did especially well to keep up with these classics specialists on such a difficult climb, but the effort clearly took a lot out of him, and he was even caught on camera vomiting shortly after cresting it.

As they continued to work together, and the gap remained steady at around one minute, it became increasingly likely that the chasers behind were not going to catch them.  

The first attack among the leaders came from Van Hooydonck with 16km to go. His acceleration had the effect of dropping Van Poppel and, crucial, Bennett, who was still struggling from whatever had ailed him earlier. 

With so many strong sprinters among the remaining seven riders, there were no more attacks until 2km, when Küng made a move.

Küng was unable to get a gap, however, and had to resort instead to leading out the sprint. Van Aert passed him on the right-hand side 150 metres from the line, and no-one else could get near the Belgian as he sprinted to victory.