{"id":587806,"date":"2026-04-07T10:34:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T10:34:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/587806\/"},"modified":"2026-04-07T10:34:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T10:34:09","slug":"emilie-fortin-on-her-first-tour-of-flanders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/587806\/","title":{"rendered":"Emilie Fortin on her first Tour of Flanders"},"content":{"rendered":"

Laval\u2019s Emilie Fortin is riding for the Belgian Minimax Cycling Team<\/a> this year, so that means riding in the biggest one-day race in that country\u2014the Tour of Flanders. The women\u2019s race, just like the men\u2019s, was brutally hard. FDJ-SUEZ\u2019s Demi Vollering, in her European champion\u2019s speedsuit took off on the Oude Kwaremont, and no one could follow.<\/p>\n

Visma \u2013 Lease a Bike\u2019s Pauline Ferrand-Pr\u00e9vot and Fenix-Deceuninck\u2019s Puck Pieterse tried for the rest of the race to catch Vollering, but it was all for naught. Vollering took her first win at Flanders. The day was not only tough due to the bergs and speed, but also the weather.<\/p>\n

Gusty day in Flanders<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was very windy,\u201d Laval\u2019s Fortin said. \u201cThat made the race hard because in the crosswinds you couldn\u2019t sit in the wheels approaching or coming out of a section.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fortin said that the gusty winds made the day\u2019s racing even more brutal, \u201cas the course in itself is also hard so it was a nice mix of suffering.\u201d She would go on to be the second-best Canadian finisher in 55th; national champion Alison Jackson was 50th in the same group as Fortin.<\/p>\n

Fortin has been riding well this year, after an 18-month fight with Epstein-Barr virus. She spent 93 km in an early four-rider break at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad<\/a> with Lea Lin Teutenberg, Britt De Grave and Jony Van Den Eijnden. The group split, but Fortin and De Grave pressed on until they were caught with 40 km to go.<\/p>\n

More than just TV time, it marked a real return after her 2023 Cl\u00e1sica de Almer\u00eda win. The following seasons were a grind\u2014but the form is coming back. \u201cI did a lot of recons of the course. I was staying in Ghent, so I tried to ride as much as possible in the area to know the start and end,\u201d she said. \u201cThe break went away pretty fast, and then, yeah, the legs felt good. We were only four, so it was quite hard with the wind, but we were working really well together.\u201d<\/p>\n

She\u2019s also enjoying her first year with the Conti squad. \u201cI think the most important thing in a team is having strong team spirit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Next up for the 26-year-old rider is the Region Pays de la Loire Tour in France on Tuesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Laval\u2019s Emilie Fortin is riding for the Belgian Minimax Cycling Team this year, so that means riding in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":587807,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[223679,49,48,635,19488,224245,82,11588],"class_list":{"0":"post-587806","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-2026-tour-of-flanders","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-cycling","12":"tag-demi-vollering","13":"tag-emilie-fortin","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-spotlight"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=587806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587806\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/587807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=587806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=587806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=587806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}