The more things change, the more they stay the same. Becoming Olympic champion in Rio last year elevated Greg Van Avermaet (BMC Racing) to a new level of fame in his home country, but one aspect of his life remains unaltered: The Tour of Flanders is still the race he covets above all others. There are many residual perks to winning Olympic gold, but Van Avermaet seems keen to leave most of them aside for the time being lest they distract from preparations for the Ronde. `Belgium is a cycling country so there`s a lot of requests that come through, cookery programmes on TV and all this stuff, crazy stuff,` Van Avermaet said recently of his increased popularity since his return from Brazil. Needless to say, there has been no appearance on the Great Belgian Bake Off. `No, this kind of thing I don`t do. I`d like to do it after my career but now I have to be focused a little bit on my career. These are my best years and I don`t want to waste my time doing this kind of stuff.` Over the past 18 months, Van Avermaet has slipped his tag as the nearly-man of Belgian cycling, winning Omloop Het Nieuwsblad twice, Tirreno-Adriatico, two Tour de France stages and, of course, Olympic gold in Rio. The upturn in Van Avermaet`s fortunes can be traced, it seems, to one precise date - July 17, 2015, when he out-sprinted and out-smarted Peter Sagan to land victory in Rodez at the Tour. The change, he says, was mental rather than physical.ADVERTISEMENT `After this win, it came a little bit easier. Maybe I started to make better decisions and that just made the difference between winning and losing,` he said. `The difference in a sprint between second and first is not much so I knew I could win Classics. I knew I could do this. I was strong enough to do this. But everything has to fall in the right way to go good. And that`s what changed after that win, I think.` Van Avermaet is, however, keenly aware - and constantly reminded - that his palmarès still lacks a Monument classic. The ...
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