Michal Kwiatkowski’s back!

2017 Strade Bianche (LaPresse - D'Alberto, Ferrari)
2017 Strade Bianche (LaPresse – D’Alberto, Ferrari)

As in ‘returned’. He hasn’t got ankylosing spondylitis or anything.

Michal Kwiatkowski hasn’t had a spectacularly successful time at Team Sky thus far. In 2014, at what was then Omega Pharma-Quick Step, he won Strade Bianche and became world champion and finished on the podium in La Fleche Wallonne and Liege-Bastogne-Liege – all big races. A year later, he won Amstel Gold, which is pretty big, and came second in Paris-Nice.

At Sky, he’s won E3 Harelbeke, the race named after a motorway that no longer exists – and that’s it.

Or at least it was until today, because today he won Strade Bianche again, wandering off on his own with about 15km to go.

There was also a return to form from Greg Van Avermaet, who reverted to his more customary second place after inadvertently notching a bunch of wins in the last 12 months: “I’d have loved to win here today because it’s such a nice race but at the end, I have to be happy to just finish safe,” he said.

Greg’s grand rhetoric continued, as he added: “Every year I come with the expectation of winning but I’m getting older.”

A new regular feature titled ‘Greg Van Avermaet’s Fighting Talk’ may or may not begin here.


Comments

2 responses to “Michal Kwiatkowski’s back!”

  1. jefers avatar

    All the brouhaha surrounding his boss has overshadowed this a bit but hopefully this is a proper return to form for Kwitako. It’ll be interesting to see if he decides to focus on being something of a one day (particularly Ardennes) specialist or if he’s aiming for other things. I personally think that any more than top 10 in a Grand Tour is probably beyond him but he’s young and he seems to have the talent to carve out a great career doing well in one day races and shorter tours, like a Rui Costa or a more successful version of Simon Spilak.

    Looking forward to seeing which climbers catch which sprinters on the TT today.

    1. His old coach said his legs were too big to compete in the Grand Tours. Oddly specific, but summed things up.

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