Tour Of Flanders
Tour of Flanders, Belgium. 4th of April 2010ur of Flanders, Belgium. 4th of April 2010
Grace Verbeke Wins Flanders!
Last year Grace finished 4th in two World Cups, Drenthe (Holland) and Plouay (France) as well as winning the first stage and the overall Tour Du Limousin (France). Following these outstanding results in 2009 Grace was highly sort after by some of the World’s strongest cycling teams and she was faced with a tough decision leading into 2010. It’s was an expression of Grace’s personality and loyalty when she decided to stay with Lotto while working hard towards her ultimate goal of winning the Tour of Flanders.
In our team meeting preceding today’s race, Grace made her ambitions clear, she wanted to win solo today. Anyone who has watched and observed Grace’s progression and results would admit that today’s win was no surprise. Everyone who knows Grace would have known she was capable of winning today.
Grace had planned to attack on the Muur but her winning move happened much earlier, she rode off the front of the group on the Molenberg with 45km to go instead of on the Mur with 16km to go.
Lotto Wins Belgium's Famous Classic!
When we asked Grace what we could do to assist her attempt to win Flanders she replied with “I want the race to be as hard as possible- I want a hard race”. I guess the race wasn’t tough enough so she decided she had to do something, she drove the pace hard on the Molenberg and pulled away from the group. Adrie Visser of HTC Colombia immediately jumped the gap to Grace and they worked together with equal turns until Grace dropped Adrie before the Muur with 25 km to go.
The time gap with 25km to go was only 35 seconds from Grace back to the main peleton, many would have predicted that Grace would be caught but with strong timetrial credibility Grace held off the chasing bunch by 3 seconds. Grace actually started celebrating her win with 200m to go, so you could say that she won Flanders quite comfortably in the end!
What a day!! Congratulations Grace!!