Arnaud De Lie (Lotto-Intermarché) will make his keenly anticipated 2026 debut today (Sunday) in the sprinter-friendly Clásica de Almería, team sources have warned against excessively high expectations that the 23-year-old fastman will hit the ground running.
Rather, a domestic accident over the winter, in which the Belgian fastman injured his ankle, means almost certain delays in De Lie's rise to top form - or at the very least, questionmarks over how quickly he will be up for fighting it out in top condition for a sprint.
"Almeria is a preparation race for Arnaud, not a test," warned manager Kurt van der Wouwer in an interview published Sunday in Dernière Heure.
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"Arnaud's progress has allowed us to stick to the calendar we already had planned with him over the autumn."
"But this setback he faced will inevitably affect his ambitions and plans for the upcoming weeks."
De Lie is set to take part in Almería before heading to the Volta ao Algarve, starting next Wednesday and which will likely see two sprints play out during its five days of racing, on stage 1 and stage 4.
As for Almería, running through Spain's most south-easterly province, the 190-kilometre 1.HC race almost invariably ends in a sprint, too.
De Lie has raced the 39-year-old Spanish Classic every February for the last three editions, claiming second in 2023, fourth in 2024 and fourth again in 2025 behind winner and fellow Belgian Milan Fretin (Cofidis).
"In terms of the volume of training, Arnaud has worked very hard and in the long-term he's not been overly affected, he's ready to race and he's getting a little closer to his top form every day," Aike Visbeek, the Lotto-Intermarché performance manager, told Dernière Heure.
"But it's in terms of the sprinting that his ankle injury has had the biggest impact. He's not been able to work on as many specific acceleration exercises that we initially planned, but that doesn't mean his natural talent has disappeared, either."
Visbeek's optimism is based on some very impressive seated power output data recently produced by De Lie, he said. But given the lack of specific sprint training, he pointed out that the demands of the traditional mass dash for the line that usually decides Almería could come too soon for De Lie.
As such, while the place on a results sheet always have their importance, Verbeek continued, the real aim at Almería and Algarve would be to see De Lie taking steps towards his much bigger goals later in the season, with top condition possible - but not yet 100% confirmed - at Tirreno-Adriatico.
De Lie is also down to do a whole range of cobbled Classics, starting on home soil in Opening Weekend and running through to his debut at the Tour of Flanders, prior to making his return to Paris-Roubaix. After that, De Lie is currently set for the Tour de Suisse and then the Tour de France.
Despite the consequences of his accident, being able to start his season as planned in Spain means De Lie is much more fortunate than another top Belgian sprinter, Tim Merlier (Soudal-QuickStep), whose start to 2026 has been put off due to a knee issue that surfaced in December.
Merlier has missed both his planned debut at the AlUla Tour, and then postpone his season start even further and after his original Plan B, this week's UAE Tour, to an as-yet unknown date.
