Since 1934, Gent-Wevelgem has marked the start of the Flemish Classics week, taking place on the last Sunday before the lead up to the monument, Tour of Flanders.
We’ve already seen some incredible racing during this year’s classics season, and Sunday’s Gent-Wevelgem will be an exciting next installment of the cobbled battles between a formidable roster of favorites in both the women’s and the men’s races.
How to watch Gent-Wevelgem 2023
Both the men’s and the women’s races will be broadcast live and available for streaming after the fact on FloBikes.
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Unfortunately, FloBikes has a pretty disappointing track record for the quality of its women’s racing coverage, and it will be interesting to see if we will actually get to see a meaningful amount of the women’s race instead of just the last 20K, and whether there will actually be an announcer instead of just the ambient noise of a helicopter (yes, the women’s racing coverage on FloBikes has actually been that bad this year).
Gent-Wevelgem is taking place on Sunday, March 26th, with men’s race starting at 7:00 a.m. EDT. The women’s race begins afterwards at 10:15 a.m. EDT.
The riders we’ll be watching
Wout Van Aert (Jumbo Visma) has said that Gent-Wevelgem is one he’s targeting this year, and he will be flying into this race on the wings of his knock-out sprint finish at E3 Saxo Classic.
Another favorite is last year’s winner Biniam Girmay (Intermarché-Circus-Wanty), who made history as Gent-Wevelgem’s first African winner in its 89 year history.
In the women’s race, Elisa Balsamo (Trek-Segafredo) will be defending her champion's title with the help of her teammate Shirin van Anrooij, who’s fresh off of winning Trofeo Alfredo Binda.
However, she will have very stiff competition from the SD Worx machine that will be deploying some of the best sprinters in the peloton in the form of Lotte Kopecky and Lorena Wiebes.
And let’s not forget Team DSM and that team’s star sprinter Charlotte Kool, who will be racing alongside teammate Pfeiffer Georgi, who herself is fresh off a victory at Brugge-De Panne.
Natascha Grief got her first bike shop job before she was old enough to drink. After a six-year stint as a mechanic, earning a couple pro-mechanic certifications and her USA Cycling Race Mechanics license, she became obsessed with framebuilding and decided she wanted to do that next. After Albert Eistentraut literally shooed her off his doorstep, admonishing that if she pursued framebuilding she will be poor forever, she landed an apprenticeship with framebuilder Brent Steelman in her hometown of Redwood City, CA. After that, she spent several years working for both large and not-so-large cycling brands. Somewhere in there she also became a certified bike fitter. Natascha then became a certified personal trainer and spent nine years honing her skills as a trainer and coach, while also teaching Spin. During the dumpster fire that was the year 2020, she opened a fitness studio and began contributing regularly to Runner’s World and Bicycling as a freelance writer. In 2022, she joined the staff of Bicycling as News Editor.
