Greg Van Avermaet hoping Olympic win will bolster Classics chances
Wednesday 26 October 2016 18:26, UK
Greg Van Avermaet hopes winning the Olympic Games road race will help him to break his duck in cycling’s biggest Classics next season.
The 31-year-old Belgian had been one-day racing's nearly man prior to Rio 2016, having finished in the top five on three occasions at the Tour of Flanders, twice at Paris-Roubaix and once at Milan-San Remo without ever claiming a victory.
But after conquering a hilly course and a host of big-name climbers to win Olympic gold in August, he will go into 2017's 'Monument' Classics with newfound confidence and momentum.
Speaking at the Abu Dhabi Tour, where he was racing last week, Van Avermaet told Sky Sports: "I always believed that my best years were still to come, and in that one moment everything fell into place.
"If you win more races, you get more confident and it gets easier to win the big ones.
"Hopefully next year, I'm going to be even more relaxed at the start of the Classics and things will happen by themselves. Hopefully I can win one of the big Classics.
"I always try to target from Milan-San Remo until Amstel Gold Race. All those races fit me really well. A win in Flanders or Roubaix would be the best."
Van Avermaet's Olympic triumph was the highlight of a strong 2016 season in which he also won Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, the overall title at Tirreno-Adriatico and a stage of the Tour de France, which in turn led to him wearing the leader's yellow jersey for three days.
He was not one of the favourites in Rio but took encouragement from his performances in the Tour and a fifth-place finish at the hilly Clasica San Sebastian a week prior.
Van Avermaet added: "It [Rio] was a pretty hard race, but I believed in myself because I knew I was coming out of the Tour with good form.
"I can climb pretty well, which I always prove in San Sebastian. I had the memory in mind of following the GC [general classification] guys at San Sebastian and I just wanted to go as hard as possible in the Olympics and see where I ended up.
"Everything had to go really well together, and that's how it went. I was in good shape, I did a good race, and in the end I was also a little bit lucky. For me, it was the highlight probably of my career."
