Is spring finally in the air for Visma-Lease a Bike? After a bleak winter in which the team have faced multiple setbacks all the way through to Wout van Aert falling ill before Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and co-leader Matthew Brennan crashing out of the same race, the British sprinter has now bounced back with a vengeance with a stunning victory in Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne.
The first British winner of the Belgian semi-classic since a certain Mark Cavendish 11 years ago, Brennan came into Sunday's race with his left side bruised and battered after hitting the deck at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and ending the race in the team car.
Yet if that kind of comeback was already remarkable enough, it was even more impressive given Brennan's very young age – he's still only 20 – and ability to show a resilience beyond his years.
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For Visma-Lease a Bike, too, although Christophe Laporte impressed at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad with a fourth place in Ninove in his own Classics comeback, the team was in need of a bigger success to feel certain they were back on the right road. And 24 hours later, Brennan certainly provided that.
Explaining why he had opted even to take part in Kuurne given his injuries, Brennan said it was part of a determination to show that he had been able to put his difficult day behind him.
"I think it was more I wanted to forget about the day, a bit of frustration led to a crash, and that crash was not very nice," Brennan told reporters after the finish on Sunday.
"I was lucky, it was mostly cuts and bruises, but coming down at 60kph, you don't want to replay that in your mind. So it was very much a question of – OK, how do we approach the next day mentally and I think we got it."
"All my left side was swollen on the arm and on the cobbles - that was not nice with the constant rattling. But a lot of it today was also mental. When we see a lot of near crashes, it's quite scary, and that's why I got caught out midway through the race."
Kuurne was a very different story, though. The entire Visma-Lease a Bike squad were very active on the front throughout the race, with riders like Laporte and Timo Kielich driving hard in a bid to whittle out as many of the top sprinters as possible.
They couldn't get rid of last year's winner Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Premier Tech), but a lot of the other names, from Paul Magnier (Soudal-Quick-Step), Arnaud De Lie (Lotto-Intermarché) to Biniam Girmay (NSN) were all left out of the running.
"It was nice to take the initiative when I had an opportunity, especially if I could get to the line without the fast guys, I could also have a shot. We thought we'd really try and hurt the fast guys and that would put us in a good situation to take it to the finish and finish it off," Brennan explained.
Describing himself as an analytical kind of rider with a fixation on how he can improve on previous performances, the process of succeeding in whittling down the field in Kuurne with his teammates was a very satisfying one, he said.
Visma-Lease a Bike really put together a great race in Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne, surrounding Brennan at all points and punishing his sprint rivals.
Oftentimes, too, in the closing two hours, Brennan found himself off the front of the race with two or three other Visma-Lease a Bike riders, and that situation could only give him rising confidence for the sprint to come.
"It's always nice when you look back and there are not many guys left, so if you can place yourself in a good position, why not go for it?" he asked rhetorically.
"I know my limits, Grischa [Niermann, sports director] knows my limits, but so much happens in a bike race, too – you can have the power, but positioning and teamwork really contribute to being up there, too."
With 12 wins in his debut year in 2025 and two already in 2026, Brennan's versatility is already being compared to that of other top names, such as Wout van Aert. But while praising Van Aert as a teammate – "he's not so big a name he won't help you, and he's a really good guy in the team" – Brennan simply said that whilst it was "really nice to be compared to Wout, if my career went in a similar direction, I would be very happy."
As for where he goes from here in terms of racing rather than comparisons with other stars of the sport, after 'only' doing Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and Paris-Roubaix in his debut year, Brennan is on for a full Monuments campaign in 2026. But while he warned against heightened expectations, his ambitions were clear, too.
"I'd like to hit Milan-San Remo and also Flanders and Roubaix in good shape, but so do 200 guys in the peloton," Brennan said. "I'd like to do the whole Classics campaign as best I can, I'm not doing a race to just roll round at the back." And at Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne, he already proved that to be the case.
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