In recent years, men´s races have increasingly seen the benefit in holding a concurrent women`s event. Most of the major Classics now hold a women`s race, including the Tour of Flanders, Gent-Wevelgem and the Ardennes races, and it looks like E3 Harelbeke may be about to join their ranks. Lotta Lepistö (Cervelo Bigla) won the women`s Dwars door Vlaanderen race on Wednesday, hours before the finish of the men`s race. Race organiser Marc Claerhout told Belgian newspaper Het Nieuwsblad that there could be a women`s E3 Harelbeke as soon as next season. `If we go for it, the first edition will be organized in 2018,` he said. E3 Harelbeke is one of the last of the major one-day spring races not to feature a women`s event alongside the men`s - Scheldeprijs and Paris-Roubaix are the other two. E3 Harelbeke, known as a mini-Tour of Flanders, has been held since 1958 and Friday´s race will be the 60th edition. On several occasions, the winner of the race has gone on to take the title a week later at the Tour of Flanders.ADVERTISEMENT Local rider and reigning Belgian time trial champion Ann-Sophie Duyck (Drops) reportedly urged the organisers to make the jump and host a women´s race. `A lot of spring Classics now have a contest for women. The only course that is missing is the E3, a `home race` for me,` she told Het Nieuwsblad. There is still debate as to whether the race would be held on the same day as the men`s race, as has become de rigueur, or whether it would take place the day before when the juniors race. Duyck has clear ideas about when she would like the race to happen.
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