Two days after E3 Harelbeke and starting barely half an hour’s steady bike ride away, the Gent-Wevelgem Classic offers a tactically intriguing ‘revenge match’ on another set of equally challenging cobbled roads in Belgium’s West Flanders province. Created in 1934 and originally run by the newspaper the Gazet van Antwerpen, the race’s finish town of Wevelgem was selected becasue it was the home town of the Classic’s first owner, local textile manufacturer Georges Matthijs. Although last year part of the Gent-Wevelgem route was changed in honour of the millions of soldiers and civilians who died in Flanders in World War I (1914-1918), the essential ingredients of Gent-Wevelgem have remained the same for eight decades. First to take their toll on the peloton, in the opening 100 kilometres, are the crosswinds and often rainy weather on exposed, flat roads across Flanders’ largest open plain. Splits at this point can often see 40 to 60 riders eliminated from the running. Then, after hours of pounding across the Flanders flatlands, the riders approach the French border country and an initial climb, the Casselberg, which precedes the three most difficult ascents of the day. These are the Baneberg, the Monteberg and the Kemmelberg, the last being by far the hardest. Named after Camulos, the Celtic god of war, the Kemmelberg’s summit lies atop a thickly wooded ridge which was the scene of a ferocious Great War battle where more than 200,000 soldiers died. The riders must tackle the steep, cobbled climb to the top of the Kemmelberg, and as if that is not hard enough, they then have a notoriously difficult and technical drop back down to the flat. After looping round and re-ascending these last three climbs at least one more time, the ultimate battle between breakaways formed on the bergs and the chasing peloton then invariably ensues on the 30-kilometre final run-in along narrow country roads to Wevelgem. Last year, it was the sprinters’ teams that were to the forefront after more than five and a half hours in the saddle. John Degenkolb (Team Giant-Alpecin) then dodged the crashes and splits in the last kilometres to claim victory. However in the past, Gent-Wevelgem’s notoriously tricky, unpredictable terrain has also shown that breakaways can sometimes hold off their pursuers - and in 2015 they may well do so again.