What will be the lasting image of this year’s Opening Weekend? Will it be Mathieu van der Poel soloing to a career-first victory at Omloop Nieuwsblad? Perhaps it will be Demi Vollering’s lotus pose salute as she won the women’s race? Or Matthew Brennan charging ahead of the field to win the sprint at Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne?
For Rick Pluimers of Tudor Pro Cycling, the lasting image was sudden and sore: the sight of the cobbles on the Molenberg, inches away from his face, before they shattered his two front teeth.
"I just slid out," he explained to Wielerflits afterwards. "I immediately felt that my teeth were gone."
While Pluimers's injuries were easily fixed – he got an emergency dentist appointment that same afternoon and was smiling again by teatime – others weren't so lucky.
The Dutchman was one of a swathe of riders hurt in what was an attritional and crash-addled start to the WorldTour season in Europe. Thirty-nine men and 28 women did not finish Omloop Nieuwsblad on Saturday. The following day, 34 men failed to reach the gantry of Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne, while 69 women did not finish Omloop van het Hageland. That’s almost 170 DNFs across four races.
Among those who came off the worst were Stefan Küng (Tudor Pro Cycling), Ben Swift (Ineos Grenadiers) and Tim Wellens (UAE Team Emirates-XRG), all of whom broke bones.
In a crash at Omloop, Küng suffered a fractured femur that is likely to rule him out of the entire Classics campaign with his new team.
“Given the injury’s location and severity, surgery is necessary,” Tudor Pro Cycling wrote on Instagram on Saturday. “Stefan will remain in the hospital in Belgium overnight. He'll be transferred to Switzerland as soon as possible, where he is scheduled to undergo surgery early next week.”
Likewise, Swift was confirmed by Ineos Grenadiers to have fractured his pelvis in a crash at the same race.
“He is currently under the care of our medical team, and we wish him a smooth and speedy recovery,” the team wrote.
The following day, at Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne, Wellens crashed as the bunch squeezed on a narrow road, and fell into a ditch. He broke his right collarbone, UAE Team Emirates-XRG later revealed, and was scheduled to undergo surgery on Sunday evening.
Bahrain Victorious rider Vlad Van Mechelen faced a similar fate at Omloop, where he also broke his collarbone in a crash. "So many hours and kilometres of preparation and then this," his father, Francis, told Sporza.
Wet, cold and windy weather all played into the maelstrom of the opening Belgian Classics. According to Arnaud De Lie, these factors fuelled a sense of nervousness in the bunch at Omloop, and made the usual battles for positioning even more tense. "This was the most dangerous Omloop of my life," he concluded to Sporza.
There were mass crashes, too, in the women’s Omloop Nieuwsblad and Omloop van het Hageland; however there have been no major injury updates.
