Van Dijk wins Omloop van het Hageland

Ellen van Dijk (Sunweb) secured victory at Omloop van het Hageland on Sunday. The time trial specialist attacked in the final kilometres and soloed to the win ahead of a reduced bunch sprint led by Chloe Hosking (Ale Copillini) and Jolien D'hoore (Mitchelton-Scott).

"The team was really incredible today, everyone did their job perfectly. We were constantly attacking all race and it was my job to just stay calm. The girls did a super strong lead-out onto the last climb and nobody could follow us. From then it was all or nothing and I knew I just had to keep riding to the finish and not look back," Van Dijk said.

"There was a really hard crosswind section on the open fields and I realised it would be really hard to stay away by myself, but I just carried on and it paid off. I'm really happy to finish off the team's hard work today with the win."

Tired legs lined up at the start of UCI 1.1 Omloop van het Hageland on Sunday following the previous day's Classics opener at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad.

The 131km race started in Tielt with one larger 52km loop before reaching the six smaller 13km loops in Aankomstiljn.

A two-rider breakaway formed with Marjolen Van't Geloof and Femke Geeris. The pair gained a maximum of 1:45 on the main field, and although there were several attempted chase groups, none made it across before the breakaway was completely shut down with 35km to go.

Sunweb drove the peloton into the narrow roads and crosswinds with 30km to go causing a large group to split off the front of the field. The leading group included riders from Sunweb, Ale Cipollini and Mitchelton-Scott.

The leaders lacked some organisation so close to the finish line, and although there were some accelerations from Sunweb and Mitchelton-Scott, and smaller splits happened, the group ultimately slowed and spread across the road. The two groups merged back together.

A dangerous group of six were the next to go clear with Amanda Spratt (Mitchelton-Scott), Eri Yonamine (Wiggle High5), Danielle Rowe (Waowdeals), Silvia Persico (Valcar), Natalie Van Gogh (Parkhotel Valkenburg) and Karol Ann Canual (Boels Dolmans).

Van Dijk made her winning move as soon as the peloton caught the breakaway group and she used her time trialling power to stay away for the win. 

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