Infographic: Team Sky puts numbers on the cobbles as Classics season gets into full swing

With today's Dwars door Vlaanderen kicking off the Cobbled Classics season in earnest, Team Sky has issued an infographic that puts the numbers on a series of races eagerly anticpated by fans each year and where the spoils typically go to the hard men of the peloton.

Sky got its campaign off to a flying start this season with Ian Stannard defending his title at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad last month, while the subsequent Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne saw one of its former riders triumph in the shape of Etixx-Quick Step's Mark Cavendish.

With Milan-San Remo done and dusted, attention now swings back to Belgium with a trio of races one day races - the Dwars door Vlaanderen today, Friday's E3 Harelbeke and Gent–Wevelgem on Sunday - ahead of the Tour of Flanders a week later.

That's followed by the midweek Grrote Scheldeprijs before the action crosses the French border for Paris-Roubaix, which brings the Cobbled Classics season to a close - and there are bound to be plenty of thrills and spills in the two and a half weeks ahead of that.

Expect the snippets about the number of participations that Bernie Eisel and Stannard have made in the eight races to be out of date by the end of this week - Sky hasn't announced its team yet, but both seem certain to start the E3 Harelbeke, adding another race to their respective totals.

Here's the infographic.

Click for larger version