Is Tex barking up the wrong tree?

The favourites lived up to their tags in Flanders, but, writes Anthony Tan, there’s a Classics guy at heart who no longer has his heart in the Classics.

The favourites lived up to their tags in Flanders, but, writes Anthony Tan, there's a Classics guy at heart who no longer has his heart in the Classics.

So. Saxo Bank's Fabian Cancellara triumphs in 'De Ronde'. No surprise.

Up till last Sunday, given what he's already achieved and the way he dominated the RVV tune-up race the weekend before, the E3 Prijs, it was his race to lose.

"Everything almost went perfectly," his team-mate, room-mate and friend Stuart O'Grady told SBS post-race in the finish town of Ninove, who was smiling so much, he almost looked like he won it himself.

"When you have an engine like that in your team, you can let him loose at 80k to go, 60k to go… it's going to be the same result.

"You can see how he was switched on the last couple of weeks, the last couple of months," said O'Grady. "He's been so geed for it, I think he was just afraid of making a personal mistake… [I've] basically just been trying to keep him under control before he wants to unleash his fury."

Were there any revelations? Not really.

With Tom Boonen (Quick Step) and Phillipe Gilbert (Omega Pharma-Lotto) in respective second and third, and another Belgian, Bjorn Leukemans (Vancansoleil), fourth, it was perhaps Tyler Farrar's (Garmin-Transitions) sprint for fifth ahead of George Hincapie that showed he is coming of age and is soon set to take the mantle off the man he outsprinted as North America's best Classics rider.

As far as the Aussies were concerned, I felt the standout performances were from O'Grady and Mathew Hayman (Sky), who were by some margin, the best domestiques throughout the mammoth six-and-a-half hour, 259 kilometre effort.

Although Sky's main man, Juan Antonio Flecha, didn't quite ride to expectation, that doesn't take anything away from the Trojan Hayman (who still had enough left to finish 13th – the best Aussie performer), and I'm almost certain the Spaniard will fare better this coming Sunday in Paris-Roubaix, which, like Boonen, is a race that suits him better.

Now, it would be remiss of me not to mention the accomplishment of Lance Armstrong (RadioShack), who finished in the same 30-man group as Farrar, Hincapie and Hayman, placed 27th.

With 50km remaining, Armstrong was still in the front group and looking good, albeit not a winner. For a guy who last rode this race with its interminable series of short, sharply-pitched climbs the Flemish call (("hellingen")) five years ago as part of his preparation for a record seventh Tour de France title, it was mighty impressive.

So much so, that as I sat couchside in the deep, dark den of chez Tomalaris last Sunday evening, along with Cycling Central's editor Phil Gomes, almost simultaneously, Phil and I remarked on whether Armstrong had made the right choice to target the Tour and only the Tour in his comeback years.

Before you give me a virtual slap in the face and say the suggestion is far-fetched, remember that Armstrong was a Classics rider before he was a Tour rider.

In fact, so good was Lance pre-cancer, he was what you'd call a Classics specialist who relished the inclement weather, and whose versatility allowed Big Tex to be competitive in one-day events in spring (1st in Flèche Wallonne, twice 2nd in Amstel Gold and Liège-Bastogne-Liège) and autumn (2nd in San Sebastian and Championship of Zurich).

And there's that world road championship he won in Oslo in 1993, aged just 22.

While third in his comeback Tour de France is a remarkable achievement, he – and the rest of the contenders – now found themselves in an unenviable situation of portcullis down.

On one side of iron-grated gate stands Alberto Contador. On the other is the rest. And for the next five years at least, Contador's Castle is looking ominously impenetrable.

Yes, the Tour is and always will be the blue riband event in cycling. But if Armstrong's objective is to create exposure for his sponsors and his cancer cause, as is his wont, he needs to win.

Perhaps, therefore, he should spend a little more time training to win a Classic that, based on past performance, he's well capable of doing - instead of riding a Classic to see if he can find a hole in Contador's seemingly impenetrable fortress, come the first week of the Tour.