With a lot of the truly great races though you don't always remember them for the winner if somebody else did something remarkable in the race. I remember, say, the 2010 Giro more for Cuddles and Vino in the mud, and for Arroyo's incredible descending, than I remember it for Basso winning. Similarly, Paolini winning Gent-Wevelgem last year is nothing on Jürgen Roelandts' solo break, which will forever be what I remember that race for, and the fact he hasn't won anything since that day is a gross crime against cycling.
This, however, was an ensemble cast. Nobody did anything superhuman, but everybody played their part in making this a great race, and an antidote to some of the poorly raced editions of recent years (2010 with everybody racing for 2nd, 2012 with Sky refusing to use any bullets other than a completely gassed Stannard until the gap was way too big to pull back, and last year). You had two of the final five who could easily have sat on and trusted their sprint but didn't (and neither of them won it anyway despite the sprint). You had a range of compelling stories - the wily veteran domestique on a career day, the seeming coming man trying to get that first true breakthrough win, the legend who's been there and done it before and has the crowd on his side - and you had the second group on the road with some breakaway riders and underdogs that people wanted to see do well. If anything, it was made better by the early removal of Cancellara and Sagan from contention (even prior to the crash of course) because it gave the earlier part of the race some impetus but also gave big guns a reason to be riding hard really early in the race so that they weren't just picking off the tired legs of the escapees later on, and it also created fewer reasons for those caught or those who had got into the Boonen group to sit on.