page_title: 2011 Omega Pharma–Lotto season
section_title: Spring classics
hierarchical_section_title: 2011 Omega Pharma–Lotto season / One-day races / Spring classics
caption_attribution_description: Philippe Gilbert at the start of the 2011 Tour of Flanders in Brugge 3. April.
context_page_description: The 2011 season for Omega Pharma–Lotto began in January with the Tour Down Under, where defending champion André Greipel debuted for the team, and ended in October at the Giro di Lombardia. As a UCI ProTeam, they were automatically invited and obligated to send a squad to every event in the UCI World Tour. The team's roster changed drastically from 2010.
  The team had 28 victories in 2011, which by itself is an impressive total as it tied them with Team RadioShack and Team Sky for third-most among the major teams, behind only HTC–Highroad and Liquigas–Cannondale. But the caliber of the bulk of those victories set team Omega Pharma-Lotto apart. Team leader Philippe Gilbert won four races in ten days in April, including all three Ardennes classics, as well as five other races that counted toward the UCI World Tour rankings, marking this as a truly dominant year for the Belgian. He handily won the individual World Tour crown, with his points total more than that of over half the teams in the standings. Thanks mostly to Gilbert, Omega Pharma-Lotto also won the World Tour team award.
context_section_description: In March, Gilbert won Montepaschi Strade Bianche by performing a very late-race attack, a tactic that has earned him most of his professional victories. While Gilbert's attacks, when successful, usually get him away alone, this time he had to deal with Alessandro Ballan and Damiano Cunego, who were able to follow. The three decided the race a few bike lengths ahead of the rest of the 20-strong leading group, with Gilbert coming across the line ahead of Ballan and then Cunego. At the first monument race of the season, Milan – San Remo, Gilbert was considered a strong favorite victory, largely due to his win on the Strade Bianche. Greipel also rode, as the team's "Plan B" for victory, but after his injurious crash in the Tirreno–Adriatico, he was not thought to be on the best form. Omega Pharma-Lotto was one of two teams, along with BMC Racing Team, left with more than three riders present in the leading group on the road after a crash on the Le Manie climb 90 km (56 mi) from the finish split the field into two large groups. Roelandts and Greipel both took pulls on the front of the leading group, indicating that Greipel was not on sufficient form to ride for the win himself. Little by little, the leading group that had once been 44 dwindled to only eight, a select group that formed on the Poggio just a few kilometers from the finish. Gilbert tried twice to attack and solo his way to victory, once on the Poggio and once again on the finishing straight in San Remo, but he was chased down by Filippo Pozzato. While he had a gap for a brief moment in the final few meters in San Remo, both Fabian Cancellara and race winner Matthew Goss were able to pass him, leaving Gilbert third. After the race, Gilbert criticized Pozzato for chasing him down, and said that with Goss in the leading group it would have been nearly impossible for him to win.
  In April, Gilbert had one of the most dominant two-week periods any rider ever has. First, he took the win at Brabantse Pijl, a race seen as a precursor to the Ardennes classics. He and compatriot Björn Leukemans attacked out of what had been a leading group of ten, and stayed clear to the finish where Gilbert won the sprint. Next was the Amstel Gold Race, the first of the Ardennes classics. Gilbert came in as the defending champion, and a strong favorite. He rode a tactically sound race, staying at the front through the many selections over the 31 recognized climbs in the race. After Andy Schleck launched an attack for victory on the Keutenberg, 12 km (7.5 mi) from the finish, Gilbert and Team Katusha's Joaquim Rodríguez were among the group that overtook him on the Cauberg, the final climb. Gilbert's final finishing kick got him clear of Rodríguez by two seconds, earning him the race win for the second year in a row. Team Sky's Simon Gerrans was third. One post-race analysis opined that Gilbert's race demonstrated that he is the best rider in the world on a short uphill finish. Gilbert was the first rider since Rolf Järmann in 1998 to be a repeat winner of the Amstel, and the first since Jan Raas in 1980 to win consecutive editions. The second Ardennes classic was La Flèche Wallonne. Gilbert was mentioned among the contenders, but the Mur de Huy climb at the finish being steeper than anything covered by the Amstel, pre-race analysis viewed Rodríguez, Alberto Contador, and Robert Gesink, among others, as bigger favorites. Saxo Bank–SunGard and Leopard Trek did the bulk of the work in the peloton chasing down the morning escape, which took an advantage that ballooned to 17 minutes at one point. Gilbert later explained that Omega Pharma-Lotto did not contribute much work because their domestiques were spent from work done at Brabantse Pijl and Amstel Gold, and that La Flèche Wallonne, while still a goal for Gilbert, was not as important to him as Liège–Bastogne–Liège. The early escape was indeed caught, and a flurry of attacks and counter-attacks followed. For a while, a group of ten riders held a sustained advantage of less than a minute over the main field. Omega Pharma-Lotto was forced to w
caption: Philippe Gilbert won all three Ardennes classics in 2011, only the second time that one rider has ever won all three in the same year.
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