Warre Vangheluwe wins stage 3 of 4 Jours de Dunkerque from breakaway but needs photo-finish against Sam Bennett's sprint
Cycling
The finale of the third stage of 4 Jours de Dunkerque was just about one of the most dramatic of the entire year. Warre Vangheluwe won from the breakaway, but the photo-finish was required as the Soudal - Quick-Step rider was caught mid-sprint and his victory was only confirmed in the photo-finish.
The breakaway of the day was formed with six riders jumping up the road. Alexis Gougeard, Samuel Leroux, Axel Narbonne Zuccarelli, Szymon Sajnok, Warre Vangheluwe and Tomas Kopecky. The breakaway carried slight chances as the riders passed through several cobbled sectors on the day.
These would see intense fights for positioning in the peloton which would cut the gap, but afterwards there would be some chaos and a few sprinters that didn't have their day. This led the peloton to have a few lulls which where used by the front riders to keep their gap. Not a simple situation for the peloton where Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale took a lot of the responsibility due to double-stage winner and race leader Sam Bennett.
The five-lap circuit featured three cobbled sectors and could be an important day for the overall classification under the right circumstances. In the final 30 kilometers a few attacks started to come off the front of the peloton, but the pace never slowed down as there were no climbs and the breakaway still maintained a lead that allowed them to dream.
Into the final 10 kilometers Gougeard, Vangheluwe, Leroux and Kopecky survived with almost 30 seconds of lead. In the final cobbled sector with 9 kilometers to go Kopecky made a move off the front but was ultimately caught. The quartet remained untied until 1.5 kilometers to go when Alexis Gougeard attacked, koined by Vangheluwe shortly after. The Belgian began his sprint early on to try and avoid the peloton.
What followed was an almost unbelievable sight. Vangheluwe celebrated but it looked like he had lost the victory on the line to Sam Bennett who also celebrated. However after seeing the photo-finish, the Belgian was crowned the victory: whilst Corbin Strong finished third on the day.
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That kid is lucky. He came within a few millimeters of loosing the win due to his premature celebration.
Why is he lucky? He worked for it and calculated well, it’s more Bennett we should be discussing maybe, was he unlucky, did he time it wrong or did HIS celebration (the part he started in his head) cost him those few millimetres?
I would not consider anyone who begins their celebration before crossing the finish line, and particularly in a situation like that, as having calculated it well.
In athletics (my past life), we were always taught you run until BEHIND the line and except in rare cases, you never see an athlete celebrate until AFTER he crosses it. All the sprinters (Bolt being one of those exceptions because he had enormous gaps sometimes) and many of the others in tight races focus exclusively on their torso lunge at the line and not the celebration. It is noticeable in cycling that the riders actually stop pushing for their bike lunge just before the line but I’m guessing this reflex was learnt more due to copying and tradition than scientific proof that it is more effective than aiming for behind the line. Has anyone heard of any studies that compare the two methods?
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- Exactly Tadej, the cancer of modern society. Full of good-for-nothing people who gain visibility and importance on social media mocking, humiliating (and worse things) to earn money. But it's the follower's fault, no followers, no "influencers".
maria2024202405-04-2025 - Great commentCaralladas05-04-2025
- i’m such a sucker for those group-hug, happy ending moments between competitors, largely because it’s so WASN’T that way in my younger, stronger days. (on that note, i have this hope that somewhere down the road, maybe fifteen or twenty years, a middle aged wout and mathieu will go for a pleasure ride together in flanders, and reminisce about the days when they were the young, strong monsters that stalked the cobbles.)OCexile05-04-2025
- Just like Dwars door Vlaanderen, the Ronde van Vlaanderen was/is NOT on MAX. Get your facts straight.Ben04-04-2025
- You might bounce more for the same power, but not the same speed. Sending 20 kgs over a jump at 20 kph will fly just as far as 10 kgs at the same speed. Again, Galileo demonstrated this.acem8204-04-2025
- So, you're saying that doing a bunch of small hops on a bike is easier if you're heavier? Why do people buy lighter bikes, then? Why do they generally feel better and faster? An appeal to "rhythm" is not helpful either, as the right "rhythm" might be on the lighter or heavier side of things, and as it varies, it's likely a wash either way. Then we are left with the physics truth that it takes less power to lift lighter things than heavier things.acem8204-04-2025
- No, weight doesn't affect the ability to go into the wind at all. It's all CdA vs power at that point. For example, it's "obvious" that a heavier object falls faster than a lighter one. But, absent wind resistance, it's not true (Galileo demonstrated this). An appeal to "obviousness" doesn't matter when the physics is clear. And yes, you have to be able to hold everything else constant, or you can't determine anything! So, imagine a 300 watt rider at 80 kgs with a CdA of 2.0, then imagine that same rider at 70 kgs with a CdA of 2.0. (Assume ideal tire pressure for both, same bike.) Which one can ride over a bumpy road fastest? The lighter one, as he doesn't have to lift as much. That's also why when they test bikes on 5 star cobbled sectors, the MTB goes faster than even a cobble-build road bike. Even though rolling resistance is higher on a flat road, and the CdA is junk, it smooths out the cobbles, allowing the person to not lift as much as they otherwise would.acem8204-04-2025
- I disagree. If you have lower weight, you will bounce more at the same speed, meaning that you will spend more time in the air and shorter time on the ground, as a consequence, when you are on the ground you have to produce more force for the same speedvappaxbipmv04-04-2025
- That’s not quite true, even steep climbs and sudden gradient changes can be considered as remaining tangential to the wheel whereas the occasional dip between cobbles a wheel drops into cannot, as such riding over cobbles can become like a permanent surmounting of small obstacles that hit back into your wheel slowing you drastically if you don’t have the right rhythm to “fly” on the mounds, here again the greater the momentum the less these obstacles reduce your speed. But, it is but one factor, you cannot decide on this alone. Like with natural surface ripple formation on desert tracks used by vehicles, there is an optimal speed range to efficiently pass over such surfaces, too fast or slow and your car gets shaken to pieces from the “harmonics” in the vibrations caused. Pretty sure the same applies to riding on cobbles.Mistermaumau04-04-2025
- I am saying I have an open mind at the moment for your cobbles theory but cannot agree with your wind statement (and by extrapolation sprinting since that implies speeds where wind is by far the limiting factor). Had you argued all things not being equal I could have agreed with you but if we thus assume 2 objets of the same size and speed but with differing weights, it is completely obvious that the lighter one will suffer faster in the wind. Extrapolate to the extreme, drop stuff off cliffs or just remember your momentum equations to verify. Now, obviously in real life we have to assume riders of different weights won’t have the same wind hitting surface but you cannot generalise at all then as you can have very unaerodynamic light riders and very aerodynamic heavy ones because it isn’t weight that defines CdA, Teslas have an incredible CdA and are ridiculously heavy, and someone like Harry Levreyssen is a Tesla in cycling.Mistermaumau04-04-2025