Greg Van Avermaet’s E3 Harelbeke winning ride on Strava

Strava users might be interested in Greg Van Avermaet’s latest upload – yesterday’s winning ride in E3 Harelbeke (or, as the BBC had it earlier this week, “the Harelbake” – which we thought sounded rather like some sort of Belgian cookery show).

The BMC rider out-sprinted his former teammate Philippe Gilbert (who’s now with Quick-Step Floors) and Oliver Naesen (AG2R La Mondiale), after the three had broken free of the lead group on the Oude Kwaremont with about 35km to go.

There weren’t too many KOMs though – just a few top tens for various interpretations of the Taaienberg.

This isn’t entirely surprising. You only need look at the route to see that the cobbled climbs of Flanders get a lot of repeat visits from the pros each spring. The respective Strava segments are as a consequence perhaps more hotly contested than elsewhere in the world.

Sadly, there’s no power data for Van Avermaet, but we can see that his 210km ride was completed at an average speed of 41.5km/h including almost 2,000m of cumulative height gain.

Naesen uploaded his ride too – as did 61 other riders.