Danelaw

Kasper Asgreen, yesterday’s overpowering winner of the Tour of Flanders (Ronde van Vlaanderen), has, for the past three years, calmly and meticulously built himself into perhaps the strongest cobbled Classics rider in the world. The 6’3”, 165-lb Dane burst onto the international scene in 2019, saving the day for his Belgian Quickstep team (from now on that’s how I’m referring to them, their title sponsor changes are fatiguing to keep track of) at the all-important Ronde, by unexpectedly finishing second after a general failure of the team to perform. He was famously terrified to climb back onto the team bus, worried that his performance had somehow let the team down, only to be welcomed as a hero in the most raucous manner. He was now confirmed as a blooded member of the Wolfpack (nickname for the team) and his dedication to the collective has been apparent ever since.

Asgreen’s volume of teamwork at the past two Tours de France has nothing short of astounding. From riding tempo on the front, for what seems to have been hours at a time, to hyper-fast lead-outs for their sprinters, the Danish champion was ever-present at the front of the peloton for the entire three-weeks of the Tours. That invaluable work helped the team of course, but also served to build his own strength, the results of which we are just beginning to see. What’s more, his dedication has been recognized and returned in kind as we’ve seen from Quickstep’s wrecking ball tactics this year, raw team aggression designed to make the races as hard as possible to best serve his deep reserves of strength.

Asgreen is an unusual case. Unless horses, unlike anywhere else in the world where they are the playthings of the uber-rich, are inexpensive in Denmark, his first sporting love of Dressage would lead one to think that Asgreen comes from, at the very least, a comfortable background. Dressage competitors are known for strong core muscles and a fine attention to position: Asgreen seems to have kept those horse-riding lessons in mind for there is no more perfect, finely balanced, rock steady racer on the circuit. He is quite simply poetry in motion, a true pleasure to watch with his wonderfully aerodynamic position.

Comfortable background or not, Asgreen is a bonafide tough guy, refusing to move south to Nice or Lucca as so many of his compatriots have done, eschewing the sunshine for the cold, wet weather of home. He won’t even ride indoors, contemptuously stating, “one doesn’t prepare the Tour of Flanders in a garage.” He doesn’t like the mountains and rides in all weather conditions, Eddy Merckx style – “You just have to put on a couple extra layers” - so much so that when he goes south to Belgium the weather there seems relieving and balmy. Ah, for the delightful pleasures of a Belgian Spring!

He’s also carefully built the Wolfpack’s confidence in his ability to win. His solo victory last year at Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne, one of the buildup races to the Ronde, where he held off a chasing 60-man field to win by three-seconds, was a sign of things to come. Then this year, at another buildup race, the romantically named E3 Classic (Jersey Turnpike GP anyone?), Kasper Asgreen showed the world that Mathieu van der Poel and Wout Van Aert were no longer alone at the top of the Classics pile. After a series of brutalizing attacks by his Wolfpack teammates, Asgreen escaped, riding alone in front for an amazing 58-kilometers while behind the field splintered into pieces from the efforts to catch him. He was eventually joined with 12-k to go, then, amazingly, after catching his breath, the Dane re-attacked alone with just under 5-k to the finish and was never seen again.

The Quicksteps beat the crap out of the Ronde yesterday, hitting it with perfectly timed power move after power move. Towards the end, Asgreen’s French teammates Florian Sénéchal – a big, raw-boned ‘Nordist’ – and World Champion Julian Alaphilippe combined to finish off the remaining field leaving Asgreen in front with ultra-favorites Mathieu van der Poel and Wout Van Aert – which is when this already most interesting race became fascinating.

It was on the penultimate steep cobbled climb, the famed Oude Kwaremont, that Van der Poel ignited the turbo for one of his patented uphill explosions; Van Aert, like a punch-drunk boxer, started weaving from one side of the road to the other in a desperate attempt to lessen the pitch and hold on – which he couldn’t - and then there were two. Asgreen calmly rode back up to the Dutchman and, defying the analysis of just about every commentator and armchair Director Sportif – myself included – began going blow-for-blow, pull-for-pull with the Dutchman instead of playing the tactical game and at least working less if not completely sitting on. After all, Sénéchal, who is super-fast as well as super-strong in the Wolfpack tradition, was behind, and on paper Van der Poel was by far the faster sprinter of the two. Logic dictated that Asgreen use tactics to weaken his adversary, but champions aren’t logical: that’s why they’re champions. Asgreen, resplendent in his Danish Champion’s jersey challenged Van der Poel all the way to one-kilometer to go when he finally sat on, wanting to ride the sprint from behind. Van de Poel, in a repeat of his winning tactics in the same race last year, slowed, dropped his gear and prepared for a violent acceleration to the line. The Dane, in a much bigger gear, didn’t even bother to use the classic sprinter’s tactic of allowing a bike length or so gap between himself and his opponent so as to allow a “run into the slipstream” for a slingshot effect. Van der Poel jumped hard in his small gear while Asgreen, in his big one, tellingly, didn’t lost any distance at all, drag racing the Dutchman to the line, getting that big gear going faster and faster with every passing meter. Van der Poel lost control of his body, everything began to go sideways and he simply sat up, conceding defeat to Asgreen.

I know a lot of Danes, former teammates like Rolf Søenson and Jørgen Marcussen, others too. No one, almost no one at all, expected Kasper Asgreen to win that sprint and I could just hear their cries of shock and joy as their Danish flag on the person of Kasper Asgreen crossed the line as winner of the Tour of Flanders. It’s funny, I’ve recently learned that “A Sunday in Hell”, the iconic movie by Jøgen Leth about the 1976 Paris-Roubaix, has been a major influence on young Danish racers for decades now, of how the dust, stones and danger captured the imaginations of countless racers, inspiring their careers. Which brings Kasper Asgreen’s victory into sharper perspective for me, for what it must mean for my Danish friends, to have a young champion like Asgreen, one able to fulfill the dreams that Jøgen Leth brought forth.