Fabian Cancellara
Fabian Cancellara
In the modern era, there have been few riders as dominant in one day racing as Fabian Cancellara.
His list of victories is impressive, but his run of consecutive podiums in Monuments is almost as amazing as the seven he’s won. Since 2010, Cancellara has finished on the podium of every Monument in which he’s raced and this dominance has, at times, made it feel as if the rest of the race more intent on stopping him, rather than trying to win themselves.
Perhaps the defining year for Cancellara was 2010, when he won his first Flanders-Roubaix double. A week after dropping longtime rival Tom Boonen like a stone on the Muur van Geraardsbergen, the Swiss attacked from the back of a group at Paris-Roubaix opening up an amazing gap in just a matter of seconds. The ferocity of the attack was such that it led people to suggest post-race that Cancellara and his SaxoBank team had somehow managed to hide a motor in his bike that assisted him when riding. Spartacus also pulled off one of the coolest bike changes ever seen in the Ronde that same race:
Although Spartacus has, at times (and perhaps slightly unfairly), been criticised for a lack of tactical acumen and too often relying on brute force, the flip side of that argument is that the peloton knows what Cancellara is going to do, but remain unable to stop him.
His 2014 Flanders win certainly showed that Cancellara has the ability to play coy when he needs to. In a four-man breakaway with Sepp Vanmarcke, Greg van Avermat and Stijn Vandenbergh, Cancellara feigned tiredness when Vandenbergh attacked with Van Avermat hot on his wheel, forcing Vanmarcke to respond. He also resisted the temptation to sit on the front and drill it, as he has in the past, trying to ride the others off his wheel rather than wait for a sprint. But his tactical gamble worked perfectly, and he won the four-way sprint to take his second consecutive Ronde, and third in total.