With the Italian Spring Classics stint now completed, the premier Classics men must hoof it back up to Belgium—some faster than others. We have had Opening Weekend long ago, now it is time for the chunk of cobbled races that shall not let up until that O! so Hellish one in the North of France. There is no way around it, to group these four races named in the title is a bit of an awkward affair. Perhaps I could attempt to say all are as different as four siblings with the same set of parents. That might be accurate, but the levels of prestige are different and have been in volatile flux in recent years…for surely if they are siblings: a couple are now estranged from each other and must have the intermediaries communicate between them. Thus I shall begin with the intermediaries in the middle, the two who are so clear-cut-ly the most prestigious.
After the Cobbled Monuments of Flanders and Roubaix, for many decades now, all have recognized E3 and Gent-Wevelgem are the next two most prestigious of the Cobbled Classics—for a long time these were the only other proper Cobbled Classics out there. They come on the Friday and Sunday after Milan-Sanremo—that is the last weekend in March each year—and a week before the Tour of Flanders. By this point in the Spring Classics, many riders have already reached their top form for Sanremo and now they wish to ride that form out and hold it through Paris-Roubaix still over a fortnight away. Meanwhile, for those who peaked not for Sanremo and shall be “All In” for the two Cobbled Monuments looming: they shall want to use this pair of races to hone or find that final form. All of this say: these two Classics attract all the top Classics riders who have rode Sanremo and eye Flanders and Roubaix to come. The top Classics men race E3 and Wevelgem for the sake of winning these races themselves, but also for the sake of holding and honing form for the next biggest objectives to come.
Now, though E3 and Wevelgem are associated as a pair in the same way as Omloop Het Nieuwsbald and Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne, just like the Opening Weekend siblings: these two Cobbled races are definitively different. Let us begin with the 200km E3 Classic that comes first on the Friday after Sanremo. I say not its full name, for alas! that has become a fast-moving carousel of interchangeable names. If not for the rock that is the “E3” always at the front, truly I would not be able to recognize it on the calendar if it ever changed its date. But for the sake of listing it, E3 Harelbeke is the most traditional of its names for Harelbeke is the start and finishing town. Like Omloop Het Nieuwsbald, the E3 is another mini-Tour of Flanders: only a pure Cobbled Classics rider wins it every year. A pure sprinter cannot win it, because should one do so he can no longer be considered just a pure sprinter. Like Omloop and Flanders itself, the organizers of the E3 Classic have made it their mission to pack as many of the famous Cobbled bergs into the final 80km of the race. The climbs shall be familiar: many have already appeared on Opening Weekend, and many will appear in the Cobbled Classics still to come. With all the Cobbled Bergs on the profile, there is the typical fierce fighting for positioning into all of them. The bergs themselves separate the contenders from the pretenders. And as is always the case in Belgium, chaos reigns everywhere else in between. A crash on one of the myriad narrow roads can hold up the back half of the peloton, and those riders may never see the front of the race again. Over the top of a berg, when all are gassed from the effort, two or three can continue pushing the pace or will launch another attack to form a decisive late race selection. In fact, though it sounds anti-climactic, more often than not it is everything that happens in between the bergs that usually decides these Cobbled races. But on flipside of that: the more bergs, the more “in between” zones for all the chaos to reign. The possibilities are endless, and with so many bergs in the final kilometers, this is another race where one can expect no more than a handful of riders will come to the finish together for a sprint.
And with E3 complete, two days later on the Sunday most of the riders will double-back for Gent-Wevelgem. Gent-Wevelgem is in the same vain as Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne where it can be or was once considered a “Sprinter’s” Cobbled Classic, though it is far longer than Kuurne. The 250km distance of Gent-Wevelgem adds to the prestige of the race—Omloop, Kuurne, and even E3 are each only some 200km in length—thus Gent-Wevelgem can claim to be the third most prestigious Cobbled Classic after the two Monuments, despite not having the rowdy “mini-Tour of Flanders” moniker. In decades past, though there were of course cobbled sectors, the profile was relatively unchallenging enough that one of the purest of pure sprinters, Lion King Mario Cipollini, has won it before. The typical strategy in the past here, just like in Kuurne, was that since all the major climbing comes early or in the middle of the race, should two or three fine sprinters with strong teams survive over the climbs in the peloton, their powerful sprint teams could work together to chase any down small breakaways up the road. And yet, this scenario is happening less and less often, and the idea of these “Sprinter’s” Cobbled Classics is heading for extinction. In Kuurne, the Classics men—even many with a good sprint—work hard in the mid-race climbs to find separation from the sprinters who themselves are showing up less and less because of it. This is mostly the case in Gent-Wevelgem as well, but a couple more wrenches have openly been thrown into the route. The full name of the race nowadays is “Gent-Wevelgem in Flanders Fields.” Flanders Fields implying a deliberate roundabout route past the cemeteries and battlefields associated with the First World War. Here in this part of Flanders was where some of the most brutal trench warfare in that World War was fought, and it must go down as some of the most brutal warfare in the history of the world. It is sad and depressing to think that it all actually happened, but I also believe it is good that this race makes it part of their mission to preserve and memorialize such crucial events in Belgian, European, and World history. One beautiful touch I love most too: the race in recent years has made a point to ride past one section of trench still preserved. The trench is still preserved, because it marks the spot where the Brits and Germans called a Christmas truce mid-war in 1914: on Christmas Eve they all sang carols together, on Christmas morning they played a game of football and exchanged holiday sweets and baked-goods. It was an amazing bright spot in the middle of that horrifying war. Perhaps, someday I shall reflect on it more in length, but for the purposes of describing the race: through the Flanders Fields once home to many trenches and battlelines, the winds come heavily and often. If one were to bet on only one race a year to have massive crosswinds, Gent-Wevelgem in Flanders Fields would be a good choice each year. So in addition to a circuitous route seeking out the crosswinds, one berg added in recent years has come to dominate the complexion of the race: the Kemmelberg. Kemmel being the nearby town, berg being a hill: Kemmel’s Hill, the Kemmelberg. Recently in each edition, three times the Gent-Wevelgem race rides up this Kemmelberg from multiple directions. Yes, sorry if this bursts another bubble, but it is common that these Northern Classics’ maps have no fine-looking point-to-point or even out-and-back route, most instead resemble a bowl of spaghetti noodles that simply crisscross and retrace their steps in loops so that they can scale and rescale many of the tough bergs often and repeated multiple times to create dramatic racing. And even this must be admitted too: Gent-Wevelgem no longer even starts anywhere near Gent. It does still live up to half its name though: after the third and hardest ride up the Kemmelberg, all the climbing is completed and there is then only a 40km run-in to Wevelgem left to complete. The strongest riders of the day will be the first over the Kemmelberg that third timing of asking, but how many riders will that be on the day? Four? Five? Eight? And how much of a gap will they have? How big will the chasing groups be behind? That provides the drama for the final stretch: shall the front pieces of the shattered peloton come back together at some point after the Kemmelberg? Will crosswinds ravage on the final run home as well? Shall a dark-horse in the leading group be allowed to slip off the front in the final kilometers and then hold his gap to the finish? The weather can play a factor, but even on fine days that final run-in can be one of the most strategic stretches of racing you’ll ever see. Sometimes it ends in a four-man sprint, sometimes a group of forty of the strongest Classics men and one or two fine sprinters. In the sense that Wevelgem and Kuurne can both still regularly finish in reduced bunch sprints more often that Omloop, E3, and Flanders: perhaps these Classics can in some way still can be called the Sprinters’ Cobbled Classics, but at this point Kuurne and Wevelgem seem to have shuttered their windows and doors to the pure sprinters and put up signs saying: “Beware ye pure sprinters, abandon hope here. Despite all your speed, ye seek victory where none shall be found.”
And thus, with the two great ones of this last March weekend described, let us speak of the ones that surround them as a supporting cast. Yes, this is where sadness and the heartbreak of the day come about. In days of yore—imagine say the idyllic bliss the dwarves of the Lonely Mountain lived in before Smaug the Defiler desolated their lands—this part of the calendar ran so: the Wednesday after Milan-Sanremo ran the 200km Dwars door Vlaanderen Semi-Classic, the E3 on Friday, Wevelgem on the Sunday, and on the Tuesday through Thursday after Wevelgem and before Flanders ran the beloved and almost cute Three Days of De Panne. The Three Days of De Panne was a small stage race to provide the final tune-up for Flanders. Only a handful of top Classics names would ever attend, but still it was a great race: a proper day across the cobbles on Stage 1, usually a crosswind-y Stage 2, a short sprint Stage 3a in the morning, and a short final Time Trial Stage 3b in the afternoon. I still remember the year Alexander Kristoff won all three sprints, took the win overall, and went on to win the Tour of Flanders itself as well a few days later—it was some of the most unreal form imaginable. Meanwhile, on the Wednesday ahead of Friday’s E3 was Dwars door Vlaanderen, another of the Cobbled Classics…but clearly low on the pecking order. Many of the top Classics men would skip this midweek race either still recovering from long Sanremo or reconning or preparing for the bigger Cobbled Classics to come. Not enough headliners would not attend Dwars to consider it a full-fledged Classic, but two or three still would, and it was an excellent opportunity to scout-out youngsters that might prove to be the future stars. As I said, these were the days of yore.
But in 2018, disaster struck like the arrival of Smaug or the death of Bambi’s Mother. Perhaps Dwars was jealous of being the third or fourth fiddle in this quartet. Thus its organizers made a deal with the Devil: they announced Dwars would be held one week later, on the Wednesday after Wevelgem and four days before the Tour of Flanders; of course this conflicted with Stage 2 of the Three Days of De Panne. Yes, in order to grow in prestige Dwars announced its intent to usurp the position of its quaint Three-Day brother. I know not the politics of the whole betraying tale of race-on-race fratricide, but the Three Days of De Panne knew they were beaten. They moved their race up by a week and consolidated it to only one-day, for how could they attract any of the Classics men for a three-day race in the six-day window between 300km Sanremo and “mini-Tour of Flanders” E3? Alas! In the first year of its new operation on the new spot on the calendar I believe that one-day event around De Panne still kept the name the “Three Days of De Panne.” I was so crushed—so sad to see such a novel little race so reduced—I have had not the heart to watch it ever since in its now neutered form. This year its full title is the Oxyclean Classic Brugge-De Panne. The name implies it is a Classic, but we all know it is not—only a Semi-Classic at best—and the Three Days itself never was so prestigious to begin with and that was what always added to its charm. A personified Three Days of De Panne was never a big-wig limousine high-roller nor even a man of significant wealth, but after Dwars’ betrayal De Panne has become the pauper on this area of the calendar—filched of its whole livelihood and lifesavings. Still even as I write these words, I shed a tear to think of the poverty to which De Panne has been reduced. And what of Dwars? Thus far, its deal with the Devil has paid off, it has become a full-fledged Classic. In the midweek slot between Wevelgem and Flanders, with its reduced length of only 180km, it now attracts most of the headline Classics men who are willing to spare or risk one last day of racing to be on top form for Flanders to come. But still I remember the villainy this race engaged in to become a fully bona-fided proper Classic. I hold few grudges, I forgive easily, but this race has not even asked forgiveness for what it did to the innocent Three Days of De Panne; thus, I am not sure I can yet forgive it. With so many big names lining up for Dwars in recent years: yes I shall watch it, but never again shall I enjoy it nor shall I give it the full Classics treatment. Expect no further reviews, nor any other preview besides this one that points out its crime. In my eyes, Dwars overnight has become the Detroit Pistons bad-boy of the calendar, and I will not help cover up its unjust actions. And like a wrongfully excused fugitive living in exile, I hope to see the day the Three Days of De Panne is exonerated, restored to its proper prestige, and compensated for the injustices done upon it.
Thus now the order is established: poor De Panne on the Wednesday after Sanremo, E3 on the Friday two days later, Gent-Wevelgem two days later on the Sunday, and treacherous Dwars door Vlaanderen three days after on the next Wednesday. This is the final block of racing for the top Classics men before the curtain rises and the Cobbled Monuments begin.
Cycling Odysseys 