Michal Kwiatkowski (SKY) won his first cobbled classic by outsprinting world champion and former E3 winner Peter Sagan (TNK) to round off a great day for Team Sky.
With Wout Poels' win in the day's stage of the Volta a Catalunya, it was a welcome double for the team, who were also defending champions in the race after Geraint Thomas' win last year.
It was chasing wins such as this that drew "Kwiato" to Sky over the winter, and you wonder if he would have been able to win had he been working with his former Etixx-QuickStep teammates today.
The race was one rider light at the start, with Greg van Avermaet pulling out due to illness. With one potential winner missing, a group of eight made the initial break, which morphed into a group of ten 75km from the finish, including record five time winner Tom Boonen (EQS), three time winner Fabian Cancellara (TFS), last year's runner up Zdenek Stybar (EQS) and former Paris-Roubaix winner Niki Terpstra (EQS).
Clearly Etixx-QuickStep were throwing a lot of high quality riders at the race, and continued to push hard when Fabian Cancellara suffered a mechanical, which he would recover from to rejoin the ever-changing lead group, by then around 20, but perhaps put in too much effort too soon.
With only the most elite riders left in the lead group 30km from the line, on the Karnemelkbeekstraat Sagan and Kwiatkowski attacked, and none of the other riders in the group were able to go with them. Their lead opened to 38 seconds 15km from the line, and remained sizeable into the final stages.
Etixx-QuickStep attempted to work together to bring the gap down, seemingly in favour of Matteo Trentin, but Kwiatkowski and Sagan worked together to maintain the gap. 2km from the line they still had 17 seconds, and despite Boonen driving the chasers forward, still 11 under the flamme rouge.
As they entered the finishing straight, both the leaders were looking round to see where the chasers were, and as Sagan looked round 350m from the line, Kwiatkowski saw his chance. He attacked, and Sagan did not have the legs to respond, trailing home 4 seconds behind the 2014 world champion.
@petosagan
Race winner Michal Kwiatkowski (SKY):
“I tried to go more than 300m before the finish and that worked out. I didn't look back, I just went full gas to the finish.”
“Being one of the leaders for the cobbled Classics is an amazing feeling, to be so protected, and to finish like that even after not doing any Classics before, it's more than I dreamed about.”
teamsky.com
Race results
1. Michael Kwiatkowski (SKY) 4:49:34
2. Peter Sagan (TNK) + :04
3. Ian Stannard (SKY) + :11
4. Fabian Cancellara (TFS) + :11
5. Jasper Stuyven (TFS) + :11
6. Lars Boom (AST) + :11
7. Tiesj Benoot (LTS) + :11
8. Sep Vanmarcke (TLJ) + :11
9. Jean-Pierre Drucker (BMC) + :11
10. Daniel Oss (BMC) + :11
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