Jakobsen wins GP Monseré

In the absence of Tirreno-Adriatico, Fabio Jakobsen (Deceuninck-QuickStep) claimed a convincing victory at the GP Jean-Pierre Monsere on Sunday.

The Dutch champion had an armchair ride as his Deceuninck-QuickStep dominated the closing stages and provided a text-book lead-out.

When Jakobsen opened his sprint, he made no mistake, and comfortably held off the Circus-Wanty Gobert duo of Timothy Dupont and Alfdan de Decker.

Jakobsen, who won stages at the tours of Valencia and the Algarve earlier in the season, wasn’t due to line up at the Belgian one-day race. He was supposed to be travelling to Italy for Tirreno-Adriatico but the week-long race, which was due to begin on Wednesday, was postponed due to the coronavirus outbreak.

Deceuninck-QuickStep therefore fielded a strong team for the GP Monsere and were the dominant force on the 196.8km race, which was based on 10 laps of a 19km circuit between Hooglede and Roeselare.

An early three-man breakaway – Lionel Taminiaux (Bingoal-Wallonie Bruxelles), Jens Van der Dool (Metec-TKH), Justin Wolf – BikeAid) – established a lead of four minutes over the peloton but that steadily dropped as the laps – which contained one key climb in the Gitsberg – ticked down.

With seven laps to go, Taminiaux fell away, then Van den Dool with two laps to go and finally Wolf with 25km to go.

There was little interest in attacking and Deceuninck-QuickStep arrived at the last few kilometres ready to take the reigns.

Shane Archbold, Sam Bennett’s usual lead-out man did the early work, leading under the flamme rouge, before another sprinter, Alvaro Hodeg, took it to 500m. Florian Senechal then performed last-man duties and Jakobsen finished the job.