Philippe Gilbert and Greg Van Avermaet, BMC Racing’s co-leaders for this Saturday’s Belgian season opener at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, were in agreement Friday that although the first cobbled race of 2016 is an important race and crucial benchmark, there are bigger targets down the road that they've marked off on their race calendars.
Speaking at a team press conference alongside team General Manager Jim Ochowicz and Sport Director Valeria Piva, the two Belgian stars expressed excitement to begin their spring Classics campaigns in earnest while simultaneously making it clear that they're more focused on the cycling Monuments that lie ahead - the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix.
Nevertheless, Piva said his leaders go into the race as favourites, and the strong line-up of riders BMC brought to the race are ready to support their leaders for the win.
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"The expectation is to win the race," Piva told the assembled journalists. "We have here two of the favourites, I think. Philippe Gilbert has already won many times this race, and Greg was also in the final last year and fought to try to win, so the ambitions are quite clear."
Gilbert won the race previously in 2006 and 2008 while Van Avermaet has been close but never reached podium's top step. He was second in 2014 in a cold, wet race behind Ian Stannard of Team Sky. Last year he was with the leaders near the finale but missed the final move that included Etixx-QuickStep's Niki Terpstra, Tom Boonen and Stijn Vandenbergh, along with eventual repeat winner Stannard.
Van Avermaet appears poised to fight for the win again this year after starting his season at the tours of Qatar and Oman, where he scored seven top-10 finishes in the Middle East races and was third overall in Oman.
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