Lotto announced on Thursday that Arnaud De Lie will not compete in Milan-San Remo on March 22 as planned. The Belgian champion has struggled with illness and it has affected his training.
Rather than head into La Primavera not feeling 100%, De Lie will focus on the races earlier in the week. He will race Nokere Koerse on March 19 and has added the GP de Denain on March 20 to his calendar.
It's a second setback for De Lie, who postponed his season start in the GP Castellon and Clássica Comunitat Valenciana 1969 in January after injuring his knee in a crash during training.
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The incident hardly slowed the 22-year-old down, as he won his first race of 2025 on stage 3 of the Étoile de Bessèges. However, he dropped out of the Volta ao Algarve two weeks later.
De Lie is a critical rider for Lotto this season, as the team aim to gain enough points toward rejoining the WorldTour as the current three-year promotion/relegation cycle comes to an end at the close of this season.
He was responsible for 20% of the team's points in 2023 and 2024, and the team have since lost other key points-scoring riders such as Maxim Van Gils, Victor Campenaerts, and Florian Vermeersch to other WorldTour teams.
After two strong seasons, Lotto are struggling so far this year and are currently a distant 25th in the UCI Team Rankings for 2025.
However, their 2023 and 2024 seasons were lucrative enough that the Belgian outfit are still ninth in the accumulated 2023-2025 points totals so far.
Since the UCI's rule change in 2020 that applied 'sporting criteria' to the WorldTour requirements, teams must now be in the top 18 of the three-year rankings to be promoted to or remain in the sport's top tier.
Lotto lost out on their licence in the last cycle along with Israel-Premier Tech, with Arkéa-B&B Hotels and Intermarché-Wanty being promoted.
This time, it's Arkéa-B&B Hotels and XDS Astana who are most in danger of relegation for the 2026-2028 WorldTour.
