Demi Vollering and Puck Pieterse smash the Annemiek van Vleuten's Strava QOM record on Muur van Geraardsbergen during controversial Omloop Het Nieuwsblad
Cycling
The Saturday's Omloop Het Nieuwsblad WE was discussed for all the wrong reasons for the past few days, but now that the storm is calming down, we can have a look at some of the interesting numbers. Most notably, the Strava QOM (Queen of the Mountain) on Muur van Geraardsbergen was broken.
Demi Vollering and Puck Pieterse rode the 1.1 km long segment in just 3 minutes and 9 seconds. With this performance, they surpassed Annemiek van Vleuten's time from 2022 Omloop by full 7 seconds!
For some context, this is a time/speed that would almost enable the best ladies to tag along with their male counterparts with the front groups flying up the Muur just 20 seconds faster. And for example former winner Michael Valgren took extra 24 seconds to ride up the Muur.
That lightning speed underlines that they were by far the best riders in the race and only gave up their chance at victory to tactical games between the biggest teams. Compared to the two top ladies, race winner Lotte Claes ahead in breakaway rode Muur van Geraardsbergen in 4 minutes and 2 seconds, nearly a full minute slower than Pieterse and Vollering!
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- His basic attitude always has been (and we know age often reinforces inherent values), if I’m going down I’m going to try taking you with me.Mistermaumau08-04-2025
- I know it’s tradition and nice but to make the discussion more interesting, if an Arkea rider had driven up to tell Alpecin or UAE to ease off for Mozzato or Vauquelin having a P, would they have been as gentlemanly?Mistermaumau08-04-2025
- That’s probably about right although if they’d talked it over it would have been in all their interests to work together to chase Pog down because those 4 arriving at the finish in that scenario would have left all 4 with a chance of victory.Mistermaumau08-04-2025
- Exactly, that easily makes for a minute at the front. You don’t see Pog cracking often either (less often than MVDP even) but when he does it’s lights out and over too. This is completely normal and to be expected, at the level of competitiveness all these guys are they only crack once they’ve pushed beyond their manageable limit and there’s no coming back from that. When your rival forces you into the red to keep or catch up, it’s over, in that respect, well done to WVA who seems to be world champion in staying just outside the red for as long as he can.Mistermaumau08-04-2025
- If I remember well, Pidcock slowed, whether out of respect or strategically or just happy he could ease off a bit, only he knows. Your point?Mistermaumau08-04-2025
- I believe Mathieu rather gets beaten by a stronger rider than one who raced smarter. That is why he wanted to team up with Pogacar to drop the JV riders and Mads who were not helping in the chase of the first group since they had a teammate up front.JoostMehrtens08-04-2025
- Just shows that LA is not truly repentant. JUSTICE was served. No winner, no second , no third on the podium for those 7 years. No real winners could be determined, ever. Lance got to keep most of his money , he really should can it . He is toxic to cycling.dave08-04-2025
- Tricky one as while I agree Pogi and UAE are simply faster over a long distance which means Visma and MVP need to be as smart with energy use as can, it's also been proven in the past that one way for Pogi to be beaten is relentless attacks, to put him into the red. However that does require a rider to as good as sacrifice themselves for that one move which makes riskHoopoeChai07-04-2025
- Even if not technically against the rules, this is just bad etiquette and frankly I hope the rest of pelaton remembers Arkea don't care about etiquette or honoring tradition which means they shouldn't benifit from it.HoopoeChai07-04-2025
- The other issue is that Mad Petersen and Wout would have let MVDP do most of the work, as he kept showing he was stronger. MVDP did the strategy with the highest likelihood of victory, he just wasn't strong enough.acem8207-04-2025