Male Team 18 Oct
Ronde van Vlaanderen
135.6 Kilometers
As no Paris-Roubaix is held this autumn -the women will sadly have to wait until 2021 to ride ‘L’Enfer du Nord’ for the first time-, the Movistar Team is putting en end to their 2020 classics campaign with the Tour of Flanders, a brutal, spectacular race which has long earned a place in the calendar as one of the most prestigious one-day, WorldTour events.
This time, and trying to follow common sense which suggests to avoid any gatherings, the women will not start in the center of Oudenaarde, rather than at the outskirts, as the same place they will finish after 136km. Eleven will be the climbs -three of the last four, over cobblestones-, with four additional cobbled sectors, the latter mostly used at the early part of a race already hard from the start. Strong winds, splits and stress create quite a selection into a peloton that tackles the main hills into the final 40 kilometers.
The Taaienberg (96km), short, steep and always with a nervous approach, usually marks the first point for race-winning attacks before the two decisive hills: the Oude Kwaremont (119km) and the Paterberg (122km), which, in this women’s ‘De Ronde’, are only tackled once, yet still are, together with the non-cobbled Kruisberg (109km), the main chance to break the group apart before the sprint.