Our squad cemented its place at the top of the UCI World Team Classification following the season’s 31st World Tour event of the season.
An insanely hard course, featuring a string of short climbs which many of the riders were familiar with from the Spring Classics, it’s what the BinckBank Tour organisers had in store for the final day. Traveling from Sint Pieters to Geraardsbergen, stage 7 witnessed full gas action from the very outset, the relentless attacking preventing a breakaway from going clear in the first 60 kilometers.
A former top 10 finisher at the World Tour race, Bob Jungels made it into the main move when the elastic finally snapped, together with 14 other riders, whose maximum advantage hovered around one minute. The Luxembourger was one of the break’s motors, but had to drop out from the group with more than 50 kilometers to go due to a mechanical that required a bike change.
Following a fierce chase, he returned in the bunch and immediately took over the helm, setting a brisk tempo that trimmed the remaining escapees’ advantage to a mere 20 seconds. At the bottom of the third Muur-Kapelmuur ascent, the chasers had the leaders in sight, an injection of pace bringing the race back together before it was blown open again on the steep gradients of the mythical climb.
Philippe Gilbert, Florian Sénéchal and Zdenek Stybar were all part of the move, the latter digging deep ahead of the penultimate hill in an attempt to go clear, only to be countered by the remnants of the peloton. Shortly after, a three-man group opened a small gap, prompting a response from Florian and Philippe, who kept the gap around the 10-second mark. But the lack of cooperation resulted in the trio increasing their advantage, before a powerful surge of Stybar halved it with seven kilometers to go.
Sénéchal briefly accelerated, then Gilbert took off and was joined by two more riders, and despite running out of road, the Paris-Roubaix reigning champion gave absolutely everything in his attempt to narrow the gap to those up the road and extend the buffer over the chasers. In the end, he finished fifth on the lower slopes of the Muur; the result helped the experienced Belgian conclude the race in the top 15 overall, where our team was represented also by Zdenek Stybar at the end of a week which saw Deceuninck – Quick-Step nab its 55th UCI win of the season, courtesy of Alvaro Hodeg.
Photo credit: ©Bas Czerwinski/ Getty Images
