Team Sky's Juan Antonio Flecha claims third place at the E3 Prijs Vlaanderen-Harelbeke.
Cancellara makes late break for victory
Juan Antonio Flecha reaffirmed his reputation as one of the world's best classics riders with a third-placed finish at the E3 Prijs Vlaanderen-Harelbeke.
The Argentina-born Spaniard broke free with Tom Boonen and Fabian Cancellara with just over 40km to go and the trio stayed together all the way into the destination town of Harelbeke.
It was Cancellara who timed his last move to perfection though by kicking again with just over one kilometre remaining, and despite Flecha's best efforts, he was unable to haul the Swiss champion back before the line and was narrowly pipped into second place by Boonen.
Earlier in the day, Chris Sutton had featured prominently in a 24-man escape which dominated the first half of the race, but the group's advantage had been hauled back to just over a minute by the time they made it to the first of 12 climbs which peppered the final 85km of the 210km route.
Sutton and his companions eventually relinquished their lead to four riders - Sébastien Rosseler (RadioShack), Maxime Vantomme (Katusha), Maarten Tjallingii (Rabobank) and Kasper Klostergård (Saxo Bank) - ahead of the steep ascent at Arenberg.
While that quartet set about extending their advantage, Boonen used the same climb to try and breach the gap, but Team Sky's riders were the first to react and Geraint Thomas led the re-shaped, smaller group ahead of the next climb on the Oude Kruiskens.
After lying in wait, Boonen attacked again on the fourth to last climb of the day - the Paterberg - and Flecha positioned himself cleverly in the gutter to avoid the cobbles as he kept pace with the Belgian, who already had Cancellara on his wheel.
That trio quickly joined the front four escapees and edged ahead on the brutish Kwaremont, which followed in quick succession. Only Filippo Pozzato (Katusha) dared to chase behind, but he was trailing by seven seconds at the summit.
Flecha found an uneasy truce with his two rivals as they worked together to hold off Pozzato's chase and closed in on the finish line. That continued until Cancellara launched his winning move with around 1400m to go. Flecha took up the chase 500m later after delaying with Boonen, but it proved too late to catch the Swiss at the line.
