Fast Phil reigns again

There are few riders who unite cycling fans like BMC Racing’s Philippe Gilbert. The Walloon is unfailingly aggressive on the bike and a consummate professional off it. Rewind 12 months, and RCUK watched as Gilbert stepped from the team bus in Maastricht ahead of the 2013 Amstel Gold Race to greet a battery of autograph hunters eager for the signature of the then world road race champion. He greeted each in turn, generously signing the proffered slips of paper before boarding his bike and cycling among the legions of fans to the sign-on area. Impressive.

More impressive still, however, was his performance a year later on the slopes of the Cauberg – a strip of tarmac he must hold in the greatest affection, having used it as a spring board to the greatest victory of his career at the 2012 world road race championships. That victory, of course, was his third on the Cauberg in as many years, having won the Amstel Gold Race in 2010 and 2011. This most recent victory may lay claim to Gilbert’s best performance in Valkenberg: a triumph attained with gritted teeth and burning legs.

For another rider, victory at the Amstel Gold Race might signify a season’s obligations fulfilled. For Gilbert, winner of all three Ardennes Classics in 2011, it could be an hors d’oeuvre. A win at Brabantse Pijl just days earlier showed that he was in a rich vein of form. Is a second Ardennes treble beyond him? With Tom Boonen (Omega Pharma-Quickstep) having failed to set new standards by adding further victories at the Ronde and Roubaix to his palmares, the prospect of local boy Gilbert adding a second Ardennes hat-trick to his palmares is one that will excite the Wallonian sector of Belgium’s cycling constituency.