Broken collarbone in Flanders leads to new Paris-Roubaix plan
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GreenEdge riders at the start of the Tour of Flanders(Image credit: Sirotti)
The spectators can get really close to the action in Flanders(Image credit: Sirotti)
GreenEdge’s Classics campaign took a blow when Sebastian Langeveld crashed out of the Tour of Flanders. The Dutchman had looked comfortable until he hit a spectator out on the course. The fall left him with a broken collar bone that will rule him out for several weeks.
"He hit a spectator at around 60 or 70 kilometres per hour," team director Matt White told Cyclingnews.
"You can’t control 260 km of roads but some people on the course have no common sense. Sebastian was on the pavement but the spectator then ran back in front of him.
"It’s disappointing because he was in good shape and he was looking good but that’s his whole Classics finished with and that’s a blow for us for next week and also for Amstel."
Langeveld signed from Rabobank in the off-season and has put in a number of solid performances this season, however with Paris-Roubaix a week away GreedEdge will need to take stock before deciding on a new game plan.
"We’ve not got a big favourite but we’ve got guys like O’Grady, Vaitkus, and Cooke who know how to race and now with Cancellara out of the race it really changes things a lot too. There’s no one, strong favourite like today."
Before the race White had predicted that the race would be won by a small group on the final selection of climbs. He was proved right when Tom Boonen, Filippo Pozzato and Alessandro Ballan escaped and stayed clear to decide the win.
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"Today was the hardest Tour of Flanders but it was probably a bigger group sprinting for fourth as we’ve seen in the last ten years because it just makes it negative. It’s such a hard parcours that you’ve got to wait to race. Anyone who tried anything early was not successful. It was a good race though."
"It’s such hard parcours that it’s really hard to control for such a long period of time. The important part f the race came so early. Before you could just relax until you came to the Kwaremont, that’s where the race started. Today the race started 60-80km before that and it was impossible for one team to control the whole race but Omega did a great job."
Daniel Benson was the Editor in Chief at Cyclingnews.com between 2008 and 2022. Based in the UK, he joined the Cyclingnews team in 2008 as the site's first UK-based Managing Editor. In that time, he reported on over a dozen editions of the Tour de France, several World Championships, the Tour Down Under, Spring Classics, and the London 2012 Olympic Games. With the help of the excellent editorial team, he ran the coverage on Cyclingnews and has interviewed leading figures in the sport including UCI Presidents and Tour de France winners.
