For them, it has almost become a habit. Like last year on the E3 GP, Christophe Laporte and Wout Van Aert, teammates at Jumbo-Visma, finished well ahead of Ghent-Wevelgem, after a long duo raid of which they have the secret. The two men finished the race hand in hand, but there had to be a winner: this honor was left to the Frenchman, who signed one of the greatest victories of his career.
One attack will be enough
Laporte, second last year, had already distinguished himself earlier in the race, infiltrating a breakaway that held up to 60 kilometers from the finish. At the time of the junction, the Frenchman will have let slip his compatriot Anthony Turgis, who obviously had ants in his legs, to better find Van Aert. Reformed, the duo only needed a banderilla, placed on the penultimate climb of Kemmelberg, 52km from the line, to swallow the leading man and leave the rest of the peloton in the mirrors.
Once they started to open the road, their collaboration was perfect. More powerful in the cobbled mountains, Van Aert, already winner of the E3 GP on Friday, waited for Laporte at the top so that they could take turns. Yet supplied, the chasing group could not do anything to close the gap with the Jumbo duo, which quickly exceeded two minutes. It remained to be seen who was going to win the victory: after a little confabulation, the leader has apparently made the choice to make a nice gift to his teammate.
A fair return
This is not the first time that the two men have found themselves in this situation: last year, at the E3 GP, they had already escaped 40km from the goal, to end up holding hands, but leaving the victory to Van Aert. A few weeks earlier, it was Laporte who had been offered victory on the inaugural stage of Paris-Nice 2022, when he had slipped company in the peloton with the Belgian and Primoz Roglic.
Usually extremely rare, the image of teammates crossing the line hand in hand has therefore almost become trivialized by the Jumbo-Visma. This triumph in West Flanders once again testifies to the overpowering of the Dutch team, which also won the Tour of Catalonia this Sunday, at the other end of Europe, through Primoz Roglic.