I’ll recap this race and E3 together after this one finishes up.
Anyways, MVDP showed his insane strength in E3 yesterday. He’s going to enter G-V as the heavy favorite especially with none of the other heavy hitters in the race. The only way I see him losing is if he plays the teammate card and the super-strong Jasper Philipsen wins a reduced sprint.
But let’s preview the course. G-V is a way different race from E3 or RVV as it only has a few cobbled bergs (1,309m total elevation, but in a much longer course) to negotiate after about 150km of flat. The hill zone is about 70k, followed by about 30k of flat to finish. Yes, that means G-V is the Monument distance of 253km. The attackers have to go hard and early if they want to distance the sprinters, which the past few years has made for some interesting racing. For example, last year Wout van Aert and Christophe Laporte rode away from the field (which included neither MVDP nor Pogacar) and Wout gifted the Frenchman the biggest win of his career.
This year, MVDP is in the field, and we can probably expect a similar level of dominance, but this time from a solo rider.
Non-MVDP/JP contenders: Mads Pedersen, Olav Kooij, Tim Merlier, Jhonatan Narvaez, Jan Tratnik, Michael Matthews, Jasper Stuyven, Laurence Pithie
You’ll notice that Visma LAB did not bring their big guns, so their best bet is Kooij to survive the hellingen (climbs) and miraculously outsprint everyone. I think if it does come down to a bunch kick, Merlier is the man. He’s been on fire this year. Pedersen looked feeble in E3; I think he peaked too early this spring. Matthews was amazing in MSR, but I don’t rate his Flemish Classics abilities as high as his Amstel Gold Race upside. Narvaez is awesome, but I don’t think this is the course for him. Tratnik won Omloop, but as with Narvaez, this is probably not a hard enough parcours for him to shine. Pithie probably isn’t there yet. Stuyven was super strong in E3; I like him for a podium here. But he won’t be able to cover the big man’s explosive moves.
Which leads me to my prediction for the race dynamics: I’m not seeing any scenario in which MVDP doesn’t shred everybody off of his wheel on the Kemmelberg (the final climb of significance, which has 20 percent ramps) and ride off into the sunset. So everybody else will be fighting for second with a serious case of Group 2 Syndrome. And MVDP will be mashing the pedals with a strong tailwind propelling him to the finish (as if the motorbike that is the flying Dutchman needed any help).
The only way to stop him is to capitalize on his tendency to sit at the back of the peloton early in these longer races and create a split, which is possible with the forecasted crosswinds during the flat run-in to the bergs. Such a situation would be extremely advantageous to his opponents, provided they cooperated and had domestiques in front to burn. But I doubt MVDP will make that mistake tomorrow; he’ll want to add this race to his rich palmares. It’s one of the few spring classics he has yet to win. So he’ll be hovering near the front during the nervours moments, as he should.
Podium Prediction Time: 1). Mathieu van der Poel 2). Jasper Stuyven 3). Tim Merlier
Stuyven will solo away from the second group and get himself another nice second place on the weekend. Merlier will win the small group sprint for third.
So there you go for Gent-Wevelgem. It’s a great race, but unfortunately it does not always get the attention it deserves because it coincides with the final stage of Catalunya, is the same weekend as E3, and is considered a preparation race for De Ronde van Vlaanderen.
Big day tomorrow! See ya soon.
Jamie
Puncheur 
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