The Omega Pharma-Quick Step team live and breathe for the spring classics. Niki Terpstra’s win in Paris-Roubaix, then, was a defibrillator reviving a body flat-lining its way to oblivion.
In Milan-San Remo back in March, the Belgian team had both Mark Cavendish and Zdenek Stybar in the final sprint but missed out on a podium place.
Then, in last weekend’s Tour of Flanders, OPQS managed to completely fluff their lines on home soil, somehow contriving to elude the podium despite three riders – Stijn Vandenbergh, Tom Boonen and Terpstra – making the top ten.
Such ignominy could be equated to Belgium missing out on a medal in the annual Waffle-Making World Championships. There were almost riots on the streets of Brugge.
If cycling’s one-day Monuments are their bread and butter, OPQS were throwing stale crusts and margarine towards their ravenous fans and hoping they wouldn’t notice the difference.
A result in the famous velodrome at Roubaix became even more crucial than Arsenal winning their FA Cup semi-final to set up a chance to end their interminable trophy drought.
Yet again, OPQS played a numbers game. This time they made it count.
Boonen sowed the seeds of victory with a powerful surge off the front of the pack on the thirteenth of 28 cobbled sectors from Beuvry-la-Foret to Orchies.
Riding in pursuit of a record-breaking fifth Roubaix win, Boonen used teammate Terpstra as a foil. The Dutchman used his sizeable frame to slow down anyone attempting to ride on the coattails of the Belgian powerhouse.
Soon Boonen had formed a leading group alongside Norwegian national champion Thor Hushovd (BMC) and Welsh wonder Geraint Thomas (Team Sky).
Now, the Boonen of old would perhaps have destroyed his fellow escapees one by one before soloing towards the next cobble-shaped ornament for his mantelpiece.
But this Boonen actually wanted his companions to chip in and lend a hand – a sign, if ever there was one, that the 33-year-old’s form was far from stellar. The fact that he deigned to wave his arms at them, have a strop and chastise both Hushovd and Thomas, suggested that this Boonen was all bluff – for the Boonen of yesteryear wouldn’t have even acknowledged their presence.
Had OPQS perhaps learned their lesson from last week, when team manager Patrick Lefevere erroneously put all the team’s eggs in the Boonen basket?
Over the cobbles of northern France it’s dangerous to put your eggs anywhere, but where in years past Boonen could have delivered a dozen intact eggs to the finish inside his bib shorts, Sunday’s Boonen didn’t so much whisk the eggs towards the finish as beat out a whole groinal omelette – and a peppery one at that.
The lead never crept above 40 seconds and Boonen was still berating his fellow escapees when Cannondale’s Peter Sagan – who had bridged the gap following his own attack – surged clear on an uphill ahead of the seventh-last cobbled sector, 35 kilometres from the finish.
Sagan really had no other option. Unlike Boonen, he didn’t have a flurry of teammates to fall back on. The same could be said for Fabian Cancellara, the rider who was looking to make history for himself by becoming the first person in history to lay down a third Flanders-Roubaix double.
Last Sunday, as Cancellara matched Boonen in winning three Tours of Flanders, the Trek Factory Racing man had to do it by himself following Stijn Devolder’s brace of crashes and Yaroslav Popovych’s pavement face-plant after catching his handlebars on the jacket of a spectator.
A week later and Trek took things to a whole new level of ridiculousness, with Hayden Roulston’s ill-judged pavement bunny-hop resulting in the hapless New Zealander taking out half a dozen riders, including the team’s star man.
Cancellara recovered – of course he did, that’s what Spartacus does – and when he reacted first to Sep Vanmarcke’s attack inside the final 19km, it looked like the Swiss would yet again top a Monument podium.
But OPQS’s Stybar managed to bridge the gap with John Degenkolb of Giant-Shimano and the race took on another alluring dynamic. An exhausted Sagan was caught and the select group rode 20 seconds ahead of an equally select chasing group.
Boonen and Terpstra were both there, as was Thomas’s Sky teammate Bradley Wiggins, who became the first Tour de France champion to ride Paris-Roubaix since Greg LeMond in 1995. Much had been made of Wiggins’ return to the cobbles after a five-year hiatus – and the Briton didn’t fail on his promise to compete for the win.
Along with Seb Langeveld (Garmin-Sharp) and Bert De Backer (Giant), the six-man chasing group combined well to bring the two select groups together inside the final 10km.
On paper, the fastest man was the German youngster Degenkolb, which is precisely why teammate De Backer buried himself on the front to tire out the other contenders.
This was a key moment. Once again, OPQS had a numerical advantage. With the experience and sprinting prowess of Boonen to fall back on should the leaders enter the velodrome shoulder to shoulder, OPQS had the luxury of being able to try a different tactic.
It was Terpstra who took the bull by the horns and launched a surprise attack just as De Backer eased off. The Dutchman’s grimace as he powered clear inside the final five kilometres was so horrific he began to look like one of Ridley Scott’s aliens.
His pulverising attack left the chasing group in disarray. Boonen and Stybar had the luxury of sandbagging while the others looked at each other searchingly for the answer. Cancellara tried the old energy gel trick, but lightning didn’t strike again this week.
Shattered by a brutal race of constant attacks and counter-attacks, caked in dust from the dry cobbled tracks, and their bodies buffeted by severe crosswinds, the chasing group couldn’t muster the requisite strength to reel in Terpstra.
Just minutes earlier spectators had been bracing themselves for the mouth-watering prospect of a mass finish in the Roubaix velodrome – something unseen since Frederic Guesdon’s unexpected win in 1997.
Terpstra’s brave and brilliant move put an end to this appealing proposal – and it was perhaps fitting that a mess-up with the host broadcaster meant that fans were not even able to watch the battle for the remaining podium places as Degenkolb pipped Cancellara 20 seconds later.
This was Terpstra’s day – and the day that Omega Pharma-Quick Step finally ended their 2014 hoodoo in the major spring classics.
The last man to mount the podium for the Belgian team in one of the cobbled Monuments – third place behind Cancellara and Vanmarcke in last year’s ‘Hell of the North’ – was the same man who, this Sunday, secured the biggest win of his career.
Lefevere and the people of Belgium will be able to sleep easy now. This time their tactics were spot-on – and Terpstra was on hand to deliver at the conclusion of one of the most exciting Paris-Roubaix races in years.
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