"In the headwind the best we could do was 16km per hour."

Those were the words of Astana's Laurens De Vreese after the one-day World Tour Classic Gent Wevelgem in Belgium. On a day of frequent rain and  90km per hour wind, when only 39 riders could finish the course, De Vreese and teammate Andrei Grivko arrived with the peloton, six minutes behind winner Luca Paolini of Italy.

Dmitriy Gruzdev crashed and fell with his bike into a small canal filled with water. Teammates Ruslan Tleubayev and Borut Bozic also crashed and abandoned the race. Team medical staff treated all three riders for superficial wounds and they will be ready to race again immediately.