by Matteo Jorgenson became the first North American winner of the Dwars door Vlaanderen this week, joining a growing list of riders from the continent who have prevailed in the Spring Classics.
Before the 2000s, only one North American had succeeded in claiming one of these tough one-day races, coming out on top in the often terrible weather of northern Europe on a long day of aggressive racing.
It wasn’t until the 1980s that Americans began to gain a foothold in the European-dominated Classics. Greg LeMond finished second in Milan-San Remo in 1986 and Davis Phinney took third in Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne in 1990.
Canadian Steve Bauer finished fourth in the Tour of Flanders in 1986, third in the Amstel Gold Race in 1989 and second in Paris-Roubaix in 1990.
Lance Armstrong was the first rider to crack the top step of a major Classic in 1996 when he won La Flèche Wallonne, and since then eight more men and nine women have raised their arms in victory in a Spring Classic.
Cyclingnews looks back at the 14 North American winners of a 16 Spring Classics and semi-Classics events.
Lance Armstrong had already won the Road World Championships, finished second in Liège-Bastogne-Liège, the Clásica San Sebastián, and a Tour de France stage, but was still gunning to add a Spring Classic to his palmarès when he toed the line for the 60th edition of La Flèche Wallonne in 1996 racing with the Motorola team.
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In one of the very few editions for a breakaway to succeed, Armstrong entered into the lead group on the Mur de Huy with 75km to go with six other riders: Alexander Gontchenkov and Maurizio Fondriest (Roslotto), Gabriele Colombo (Gewiss), Didier Rous (Gan), Mauro Gianetti (Polti), and Enrico Zaina (Carrera).
Despite having team tactics against him, Armstrong followed an attack by Gontchenkov on the Côte d’Ain, Rous bridged across and, when Armstrong attacked again, only the Frenchman could follow.
A Canadian phenom who would later confess to doping after being pressured by her coach, Geneviève Jeanson was one of the top climbers in the world in 2000 and vying for a spot on the Canadian Olympic team, but didn’t meet the selection rules because she had raced as a junior the previous year. La Flèche Wallonne was one of the races the national federation would consider in deciding if they could make an exception, so the stakes were high.
Jeanson got away with a strong group with 60km to go and then showed her climbing prowess by motoring away from Pia Sundstedt and Fany Lecourtoise to take the win and make the team for the Sydney Olympics.
USA’s George Hincapie was considered the top Classics rider in the country, almost always being in the mix, but struggled to break the top 10. The 2001 edition of Gent-Wevelgem changed that.
Hincapie made the selection on the first trip over the Kemmelberg with 60km to go and again when the breakaway split in the final 20km. He followed Dutchman Leon van Bon, and sprinting to the line with a flat tyre, managed to pip him with the bike throw.
He didn’t manage to win another Classic until 2004 when he escaped with Kevin Van Impe with 6km to go in Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne and then out-sprinted the Belgian for the win. He remains the only American winner of the race so far.
In 2003, Tyler Hamilton was at the beginning of his second season with Bjarne Riis’ CSC squad, having thrown off the shackles of being on a rung below Lance Armstrong with US Postal. Coming off a second place in the Giro d’Italia the previous year, Hamilton started the season with a strong Paris-Nice then second overall in the Tour of the Basque Country.
He didn’t make much of a habit of racing the Classics but made the most of Liège-Bastogne-Liège in 2003 to show up his former teammate, Armstrong, who attacked repeatedly in the final 20km to no avail. Hamilton made a surprise move on the descent from the Côte de Saint-Nicolas with 3km to go and powered away to one accomplishment that Armstrong never bagged, winning La Doyenne. Both would go on to have their reputations destroyed by doping revelations, but Hamilton was able to keep this result.
A different Armstrong emerged as a Classic winner in 2008 – Kristin Armstrong. In one of the rare one-day race victories of her career outside time trials, Armstrong broke away with Dutch rider Regina Bruins and then out-sprinted her to win the Ronde van Drenthe.
The race is now a WorldTour event but was only classified as a 1.1-ranked race at the time. It still had a start list packed with talent as one of the few Spring Classics for women. She would go on to win the gold medal at the Beijing Olympics that year and then repeat that performance two more times.
Tyler Farrar was one of the rare Americans to crack the top echelon of sprinting in Europe. Earlier in his career, he showed his speed by winning stages of the Tour de l’Avenir, Tirreno-Adriatico, and the Vuelta a España. He claimed his first one-day race at the Hamburg Cyclassics in 2009 and had a strong start to the 2010 season with a stage of the Driedaagse de Panne, which later became the Brugge-De Panne Classic.
In the bunch sprint of the 2010 Scheldeprijs, Farrar timed his sprint perfectly to beat Robbie McEwen and chalk up the biggest one-day win of his career.
During her brief career, Evelyn Stevens showed her raw talent in time trials and hilly races, winning stages of the Giro Donne, Redlands Classic and Tour Femenin l’Ardeche. In 2012, the race was on to earn a berth in Team USA for the London Olympics, and she wasted no time piling up results. La Flèche Wallonne was her only Spring Classic but she made it count.
On the Mur de Huy, Stevens was up against four-time winner Marianne Vos but patiently waited for Vos to start her acceleration before rocketing past. It was one of only two one-day races that Stevens won in her career along with the Philadelphia Classic.
American women enjoyed an incredible run of success in the mid-2010s with a depth of talent. Lauren Hall spent most of her career racing in the US with teams like Tibco, Optum, Twenty16 and UnitedHealthcare, but one year’s outing with the US national team paid off in spades.
It was only the third edition of Gent-Wevelgem for women in 2014, and it was the first year the race went over the Kemmelberg twice. Hall made the winning breakaway over the Monteberg with 35km to go and another selection soon after. In the eight-rider sprint, Hall out-paced Janneke Ensing and Vera Koedooder to bring home the biggest prize of her career.
Following on the recent success of her compatriots, Megan Guarnier, having been with the dominant Dutch team Boels Dolmans (now SD Worx-Protime) for a season, began 2015 as a bit of an underdog. She had shown flashes of potential – a second place at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad in 2013, a top 10 in the Tour of Flanders and a top 10 overall at the Giro Donne, but she was in no way the star rider she would become when she toed the line for Strade Bianche in 2015.
The only hint that something special might be in the works was a second place overall in the Tour of New Zealand, where Team USA swept the podium. But Boels Dolmans had faith in the American, and Stevens teamed up with Lizzy (Armitstead) Deignan to soften the competition, countering her teammate’s attack on the last gravel sector and then soloing to victory.
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Often overshadowed by her compatriots in Europe, Coryn Labecki neé Rivera was considered a sprinter, a criterium rider, and a domestic-level stand-out with dozens of national titles to her name. After three years with UnitedHealthcare, 2017 was her first with Team Sunweb and her first full European season.
She showed her speed in the Drentse-8, taking fourth in the 1.2-ranked race before heading to Italy for the Trofeo Alfredo Binda, where she started a remarkable run of success. Profiting from a massive lead-out from teammate Ellen van Dijk, she out-sprinted Arlenis Sierra and Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig.
Rivera then turned around to finish third in Gent-Wevelgem before becoming the first American to win the Tour of Flanders, again, assisted by Van Dijk who helped run down a dangerous four-rider breakaway and lead Rivera to a sprint victory.
Another rider who spent years racing on the domestic circuit, Ruth Edwards neé Winder, an Olympian on the track in 2016, put her focus on the road for good in 2017. She dominated the national calendar and won the Tour de Feminin that year. She signed with Team Sunweb in 2018 before moving to Trek-Segafredo the next year.
Winder was better known for her stage race results but won the US title in 2019 and, after the championships were cancelled amid the COVID-19 pandemic, she kept the stars and stripes for 2021.
De Brabantse Pijl was just one of the Classics she raced, mainly as a domestique. But this day, she made a six-rider escape group in the final 20km along with Demi Vollering and Elisa Balsamo. The Italian opened up the sprint and Vollering came past thinking she’d won only to have Winder pip her with a bike throw as Vollering raised her arms in celebration.
It’s not often a neo-pro wins a Classic, even a minor one, but Magnus Sheffield did that in 2022 just before his 20th birthday. He’d won a stage of the Volta a Andalucia-Ruta del Sol earlier in the year and had a decent result in Dwars door Vlaanderen while working for Tom Pidcock, but went into De Brabantse Pijl pretty far off the radar.
Even in the six-man breakaway he entered into with his teammates Ben Turner and Pidcock. They were up against experienced riders like Remco Evenepoel and Michael Matthews but won the tactical game by sending their neo-pro on the attack. Sheffield went with 3.5km to go and the rest waited too long to react, leaving the American to solo to victory.
In the third edition of Paris-Roubaix, Canadian Alison Jackson was far from being a pre-race favourite. Racing for EF Education-TIBCO-Silicon Valley Bank, she went with the early breakaway and committed fully to the move. The escape was helped by a crash that split the peloton and a second that held up almost the entire chase group on the Pont-Thibault à Ennevelin cobbles.
By the Carrefour de l’Arbre, there were just six left in the lead group: Jackson, Katia Ragusa, Marthe Truyen, Eugénie Duval, Marion Borras and Marta Lach (Ceratizit-WNT), with favourites like Lotte Kopecky and Marianne Vos hot on their heels.
Jackson kept her cool, timing her sprint perfectly to take a life-changing victory and the dance to go along with it.
American Matteo Jorgenson was part of the Visma-Lease a Bike team behind Wout van Aert for Dwars door Vlaanderen, having made the switch from Movistar in the off-season to the Dutch superteam.
Van Aert was hoping to show his form ahead of the Tour of Flanders but came down in a horrific crash on a descent with 67km to go after touching wheels with teammate Tiesj Benoot.
With the Belgian superstar clearly injured, Benoot and Jorgenson were forced to keep racing to complete the team’s objective. Both ended up in the winning move and Jorgenson played off an attack by Benoot with 7km to go, catching the rest of the breakaway at a moment of fatigue. He built up a lead of 30 seconds and had ample time to celebrate his victory as the first American winner of the race.
