One of the abiding images of last year’s Tour of Flanders was the sight of Sep Vanmarcke, the leading home contender, giving a forlorn, lone chase after being surprisingly dropped by the peloton on the slopes of the Taaienberg, long before the race’s endgame had truly begun.
There must have been an uneasy feeling of déjà vu for Vanmarcke at Gent-Wevelgem on Sunday when he failed to make the 34-rider leading group that formed when the peloton split in crosswinds with some 130 kilometres still to race.
To place second in Wevelgem after such an inauspicious start, then, will surely have been a boon to Vanmarcke’s often fragile confidence ahead of next Sunday’s Tour of Flanders. Certainly, that misstep apart, there were largely positive auguries to be drawn from the LottoNL-Jumbo man’s display here.
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After a frantic, hour-long chase in the second echelon, Vanmarcke bridged up the leaders with 90 kilometres remaining. He proceeded to launch a searing attack on the penultimate climb of the Baneberg and was then the only man who could follow eventual winner Peter Sagan (Tinkoff) and Fabian Cancellara (Trek-Segafredo) on the final ascent, the Kemmelberg.
“It didn’t start well for me,” Vanmarcke said afterwards with considerable understatement. “Beforehand, we knew that there were going to be crosswinds. I was well positioned at the turn, but it was my own fault because I dropped back after that when nothing happened. Suddenly, it completely split up. From there it was a chase for me. I made up a lot of ground and got into the second echelon, but it was a long pursuit from there.”
Vanmarcke, like everybody else, wasn’t able to hold the wheels of Cancellara and Sagan as they bounded up the final ascent of the Kemmelberg, but he managed to keep their coattails just about within clutching distance as he crested the summit.
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