Tour of Flanders 2012

The road

At the start

Boonen against Cancellara, on a new road

Bruges, and a Ronde nobody has ridden before: the Muur is gone, the finish has moved to Oudenaarde, and the Oude Kwaremont and Paterberg come round three times each. Tom Boonen arrives off E3 and Gent-Wevelgem, chasing a third Ronde and the club of four men who have done it. Fabian Cancellara has the one acceleration that can end a race outright. And if those two watch each other, Pozzato and Ballan are waiting.

How it was won

1. 1169 km to go

   Fifteen up the road

   A break of fifteen — Lastras, Tjallingii, Farrar among them — is far too strong a group for Omega Pharma-QuickStep's liking, and they chase it all morning without ever closing it. Onto the first cobbles at Kruishoutem the gap is still almost six minutes.

2. 265 km to go

   The Koppenberg takes twelve

   The wall in the woods does what it always does. Of the fifteen leaders only nine are still riding at the top, and they tip over it with two minutes on a peloton that is starting to look like a race.

3. 363 km to go

   Cancellara's Ronde ends in the feed zone

   Just past the Koppenberg, on a straight road with nothing on it, the favourite goes down. Fabian Cancellara does not get up: collarbone broken in three places, his spring finished in a ditch beside a musette. Flanders loses its biggest name without a single attack being made on him.

4. 436 km to go

   Chavanel rips up the Kwaremont

   Vanmarcke leads onto the second Kwaremont and Sylvain Chavanel goes straight over the top of him. The French champion never looks back, and by the run to the Paterberg the race is down to twenty-five riders.

5. 515 km to go

   Ballan lights the last Kwaremont

   Third time up the Oude Kwaremont, eighteen kilometres left, and Alessandro Ballan simply rides away from everyone as if the cobbles were flat. For a few seconds it looks like the winning move of a new Ronde de Vlaanderen — and then Tom Boonen comes across with Filippo Pozzato glued to his wheel, and the three of them crest the Kwaremont with the race already decided in outline, if not in name.

6. 613 km to go

   Three men over the Paterberg

   Pozzato leads it up the last wall, Ballan on his wheel, Boonen holding on all the way to the top. Nobody behind gets within touching distance. Thirteen kilometres of flat road to Oudenaarde, and a Belgian with the fastest finish of the three.

7. 7At the line

   Boonen makes it three

   Ballan throws punch after punch in the last kilometres and Boonen shuts every one of them down. When the Italian goes for the final time, Boonen simply comes around him; Pozzato launches and cannot get past. A third Tour of Flanders, and the fourth man in the race's history to do it.

The result