Fifty metres from home, Bryan Coquard (Direct Energie) began to sense that victory at Dwars door Vlaanderen was his. He could almost reach out and touch it. In the end, that would prove part of his undoing.
After careering past another man with a solid track schooling, Fernando Gaviria (Etixx-QuickStep), on the uphill sprint to the line, Coquard must have felt that he had already completed the hardest part of the bargain.
To his right, Edward Theuns (Trek-Segafredo) could not match his acceleration and as the finish banner approached, Coquard looked a certain winner. Just as the Frenchman began to straighten up and lift his hands from the bars in celebration, however, Jens Debusschere (Lotto-Soudal) swooped past to snatch victory by little more than a rim.
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Shades of Erik Zabel’s defeat at the hands of Oscar Freire at Milan-San Remo in 2004, but Coquard accepted his fate with good grace, in part, perhaps, because he has just returned from a month away from racing after fracturing his right shoulder in a training crash.
“Gaviria went for a very long sprint and he faded a bit, and then I launched my sprint with 150 metres to go. I saw Theuns to my right and I saw myself winning the race,” Coquard said afterwards. “I flung my bike forward, and I was ready to raise my arms, but then at the last minute I saw Debusschere come by.”
Following a fierce battle on the Oude Kwaremont and Paterberg, the splintered peloton reformed in part on the run-in to the finish, with 33 riders contesting the sprint once late attacker Greg Van Avermaet (BMC) was swept up in the finishing straight.
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