Julian Alaphilippe takes second title in a row at World Championships of Flanders 2021
Sep 26 2021 11:14 pm CET
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Julian Alaphilippe (France, Deceuninck-Quick-Step) has taken the victory of the road race at the World Championships of Flanders 2021, for the second time in a row.
By: Maritza Cárdenas
The road race of Flanders 2021 was 268.3 kilometres long and took the peloton between Antwerp and Leuven over a route that featured more than 40 climbs, cobblestones and narrow roads, a typical Belgian one-day race. The first escape of the day included names like Patrick Gamper (Austria), Tito Hernandez (Colombia) and Kim Magnusson (Sweden).
Meanwhile, Tim Declercq did what he normally does with Deceuninck-Quick-Step, but this time with the Belgian selection, and pulled the pack to make the race more difficult in favour of his formation. The escape was reeled back in and soon after a much stronger group that included Benoit Cosnefroy, Magnus Cort Nielsen, Primoz Roglic, Declercq, Kasper Asgreen and Remco Evenepoel, took the lead.
Behind, Italy and Belgium took over to control the pace and left riders like Caleb Ewan struggling behind. At 56 kilometres from the finish line, Julian Alaphilippe launched an attack and took with him riders like Wout van Aert, and bridged to the men in front.
The World Champion of 2020 was the most active of the front group and kept launching one attack after the other until he managed to break free with 18 kilometres to go. Behind, the riders started chasing, which caused the group to grow smaller until Dylan van Baarle (The Netherland), Michael Valgren (Denmark), Jasper Stuyven (Belgium), Neilson Powless (USA) and Thomas Pidcock (Great Britain) were the only ones to remain.
Soon it was evident that it was impossible to catch the Frenchman, so the others had to fight for the rest of the medals. Alaphilippe crossed the finish line 32 seconds ahead of the others -having even time to celebrate with the public his second world title- Van Baarle took the silver medal and Valgren, the bronze, on a sprint that had to be checked with photo-finish.
Julian Alaphilippe takes second title in a row at World Championships of Flanders 2021 https://t.co/sebCA4qLOc#Flanders2021
— CyclingPub (@CyclingPub) September 26, 2021
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