It's the midweek before Belgian cycling's much anticpated Opening Weekend, and teams are heading out onto the cobbles and hills of East Flanders to get a taste of the course ahead of the weekend's races.
Past winners Sep Vanmarcke, Greg Van Avermaet, and Jasper Stuyven are among those riding the route with their teams, while Flandrian squad Lotto-Dstny are also hitting the roads with Victor Campenaerts and Arnaud De Lie.
Campenaerts, former World Hour Record holder, is a recent convert to the cobbles, having last year targeted the spring Classics for the first time. He has a new bike with a Classified rear hub, an enormous 1x front chainring, extremely narrow bars, turned-in hoods, and wide tyres. Anything that he sees as beneficial to performance is on the table, regardless of whether it'll get some funny looks in the bunch.
The team's young sprinter De Lie, meanwhile, is as much of a team leader even though he will be making his Omloop Het Nieuwsblad debut this weekend.
The 20-year-old enjoyed a stunning neo-pro season in 2022 with nine wins and he already has three in 2023, including two stages at the Etoile de Bessèges.
Now several fellow pros are already tipping him as a contender for Saturday's race.
"For this edition, I see Arnaud De Lie as a favourite," AG2R Citroën's Oliver Naesen told Het Nieuwsblad this week. "He's special – I've already seen him do incredible things and yet he's very down to earth."
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Greg Van Avermaet also named the young Walloon among a shortlist of favourites in the absence of Classics superstars Wout van Aert and Mathieu van der Poel, while Vanmarcke said he can't see who will be able to drop De Lie.
"If Lotto want to, they can control everything for De Lie and then I want to see who can beat him," Vanmarcke asked.
"In Bessèges he rode over longer climbs than there are at Omloop with ease. I don't see who is going to ride him off in a 200km race."
Lotto-Dstny team manager Kurt Van De Wouwer told the Belgian paper that De Lie's rise has been quicker than expected, adding that the rising star hasn't felt the pressure on the way up, despite his growing reputation.
A sign of how down to earth the farmer's son from the Ardennes is? On Wednesday he caught a train to Oudenaarde to join the team for their first recon ride of the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad course.
De Lie has already racked up 22 wins since making the step up from Lotto's U23 development squad to the WorldTour ranks last year. He has, however, only competed in five WorldTour race days – a sign of the measured developmental approach the team is taking.
De Lie sprinted to an impressive hilltop win at the Etoile de Bessèges earlier this month (Image credit: Luc ClaessenGetty Images)
"I said 'yes' to the question of whether he can already win a Classic," Van De Wouwer said.
"But [the progression] went quicker than expected, of course. After he won his third race in January last year, he never really stopped. He hasn't had a single dip and he took another step forward in the winter.
"Does he experience pressure? Yes, but to him, it seems like something normal. If he's good and finds a parcours to match his ability he simply says, 'Today I should be able to win'. This is how he has been since childhood."
De Lie opened his 2023 account with a sprint victory from a group of 32 at the hilly Clàssica Comunitat Valenciana. Earlier this month he beat the likes of Mads Pedersen, Benoît Cosnefroy, and Dylan Teuns to win the first of two stages at the Etoile de Bessèges, all the more impressive given the 8% hilltop finish.
Omloop Het Nieuwsblad hadn't originally been on his spring programme, though he was always down to race the sprinter-friendly Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne on Sunday, and debuts at Paris-Nice, Milan-San Remo, and Paris-Roubaix are coming up later in the spring.
Van De Wouwer said that adding his Omloop bow to the list doesn't mean that any more pressure will be heaped onto shoulders of the rising star.
"That's not the intention," he said. "Competing for wins in smaller races and gaining experience in bigger races – that is, and will remain, the approach.
"If he's at the front and something is possible, then all the better. In any other case, he'll have done the race once with a view to next year.
"We also still have Victor Campenaerts as a leader. De Lie being there is also an advantage for him. They're two different profiles and they can reinforce each other."
Dani Ostanek is Senior News Writer at Cyclingnews, having joined in 2017 as a freelance contributor, later being hired full-time. Her favourite races include Strade Bianche, the Tour de France Femmes, Paris-Roubaix, and Tro-Bro Léon.
