Stijn Devolder (Vacansoleil-DCM) and Leif Hoste (Katusha) have both suffered bad crashes in the lead up to Sunday’s Ronde van Vlaanderen. The former came down in a crash in the second stage of the Driedaagse De Panne-Koksijde, while the latter hit the tarmac in last Sunday’s Gent-Wevelgem.
As Flemish riders though, both will be on the Ronde start line in Brugge on Sunday, even if they’re not at 100%.
Devolder suffered a serious gash to his left elbow when he came down. The Belgian champion managed to finish the stage though, but elected not to start the next morning; hardly surprising, given the conditions. As an arm injury, Devolder’s is the more bothersome of the two injuries as he needs all his strength to ride the cobbles and hills.
“This morning I couldn’t even put food in my mouth with my left hand,” Devolder told Het Nieuwsblad. “The team doctor tried to close the gaping wound in my elbow with sticking plaster, but that did not succeed; eventually it needed two stitches. Last night I hardly slept a wink because of the pain.”
As a two-time winner of the Ronde, Devolder would normally start Sunday’s race as one of the big favourites; his injuries change that entirely, and he will likely be lucky to finish the race. This is particularly frustrating, given the condition he has built this season.
"You know all those years I never fell in De Panne?” he asked. “I have never trained so hard, I'm three kilograms lighter than ever for the Ronde, and then I hit the pavement less than three days of the start of the Ronde."
“I hope I can pull the bars okay on Sunday,” he added. “I’ll try as hard as possible to be in Brugge.”
Hoste, conversely is far more optimistic. The three-time Ronde runner-up’s injuries would ordinarily be considered more serious, having seriously gashed his face and lost a tooth, but the Katusha rider has made the best of the situation.
“I look at it differently,” he said. The time elapsed since my crash has given me more time for recovery. My training has been good, considering the circumstances.
“Of course, I already feel that left and right I have been given a push. I rode some hills and the part between the [Oude] Kwaremont and the Koppenberg. I do not even know how many kilometres I did, because I work without a speedometer. I think it was 160."
Hoste was asked if he believed that De Panne was too dangerous and risky a race to ride in the days leading up to the Ronde, the biggest race on the Flemish calendar; the Belgian doesn’t think so though.
"Oh, I was talking about it with my wife,” he explained. “You can crash anywhere; what happened to [Niki] Terpstra was even worse. Ideally, of course, tomorrow I’ll get a new tooth up in my mouth. Wednesday the dentist took the size of the false tooth and the dental bridge will be located today. There are worse things in life."
Although Hoste has been second in the race three times (in 2004, 2006 and 2007) he will likely be expected to sacrifice his own ambitions for those of team captain Filippo Pozzato.