Fresh from victory in the Tour du Haut Var, Italian Filippo Pozzato (Liquigas) stole Het Volk from under the nose of Belgium’s Tom Boonen and Nick Nuyens with an audacious attack inside the last kilometre, having forced Boonen to bridge a gap that would otherwise have left eventual second-placed Juan Antonio Flecha (Rabobank) to have fought out the finish with CSC’s Stuart O’Grady. In the event, Boonen placed third at the end of a 210km race that uses many of the cobbled climbs of the Tour of Flanders, leaving Pozzato likely to be a marked man during the ‘Ronde’itself on 8 April.

pictures by Fotoreporter Sirotti