Ballan wins Tour of Flanders
from IOL
Italian Alessandro Ballan of the Lampre team won the 91st edition of the Tour of Flanders, held over 259km between Bruges and Meerbeke on Sunday.
Ballan, who thus becomes the first Italian since Andrea Tafi in 2002 to win the race known as the ‘Ronde’, surged ahead of Leif Hoste of the Predictor team to snatch victory from the Belgian in the closing metres before the finish.
Both riders had managed to pull ahead in the final 20km of the race, in which Belgium’s two-time winner Tom Boonen fell out of contention towards the end, and worked together to keep their chasers at bay.
A chasing pack of riders were in hot pursuit, just behind another pair of victory hopefuls Tomas Vaitkus and Karsten Kroon.
As the leaders raced towards the finish line, Hoste, who has previously claimed a number of runner-up places in the race including in 2006 when he finished behind Boonen, was forced to stay on Ballan’s wheel.
The Italian is known as a formidable sprinter, and when Hoste attacked in the last 200 metres he was allowed only a brief advantage before Ballan pulled up behind him and overtook the Belgian just two metres before the line.
Boonen had won the past two years and had been bidding to become the first rider in over half a century to win the race three times consecutively.
