Arnaud de Lie (Lotto) claimed the win in a messy sprint to win the Super 8 Classic in Belgium, edging out Matt Brennan (Visma-Lease a Bike) from a 20-rider group to take his sixth victory of the season, and his second in three days.
Jordi Meeus (Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe) was third in Boortmeerbeek.
De Lie sat on his teammate’s wheel in the final kilometre, waiting to unleash his sprint while Matteo Trentin (Tudor) was sprinting on the other side of the road.
“It’s really special to do the double, it’s never very easy. Two races [that are] really good for me, I come with a lot of ambitions, to do it is always very special. Thanks to all my team for all the work, it was just amazing,” said De Lie who won the Grand Prix de Wallonie this past week.
Visma-Lease a Bike, driven by Wout van Aert, lit up the race with 80km to go, splitting the peloton and forming a large chase group that swallowed the early break inside of 35km to go.
From then on, it became a tactical game of cat and mouse between the teams that had multiple riders in the group, such as Visma, Tudor, and Lotto.
Van Aert shouldered most of the pace-making, aided at times by Tudor and Lotto, to hold off the peloton. The bunch closed to within 30 seconds, but disorganisation killed the chase, leaving the lead group to battle it out in the sprint.
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Final sprint to the line (Image credit: Getty Images)
Wet roads, including on the cobbled climbs, challenged the peloton on the 14th edition of the Super 8 Classic, with a 202km course from Brakel to Boortmeerbeek.
The early break, which included Julius Johansen (UAE Team Emirates-XRG), Artem Schmidt (Ineos-Grenadiers), Filip Maciejuk (Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe) and Mika Heming (Tudor), escaped in the first kilometres and built up a maximum gap of four minutes.
Under pressure by Visma, the peloton split after 120 kilometres of racing with a 21-rider chase group forming with multiple riders from Visma, Lotto, Tudor, XDS-Astana and Ineos. Missing from the chase were Soudal-Quickstep, UNO-X and Cofidis, who led the chase in the peloton.
The chase group slowly closed down the gap to the lead quarter, which became a trio as Maciejuk was the first rider to drop out with 57km to go.
Lotto took up the reins of the chase group the second time up the cobbled ascent of Moskesstraat, setting up an attack for De Lie who was reeled back in by Van Aert, but the acceleration doomed the break who were reeled in soon after.
With 22km to go, as the gap was down to under 30 seconds, Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Deceuninck) attacked from the peloton with Biniam Girmay (Intermarché-Wanty) on his wheel but again the lack of cooperation doomed the chase.
In the front group, Riley Sheehan (Israel-PremierTech) made multiple attacks but was not able to escape the clutches of the lead group. Michal Kwiatkowski (Ineos-Grnadiers) also tried his chance, even overcooking a corner and having to use the sidewalk to stay upright but to no avail.
With 2km, Van Aert continued to play the perfect teammate role, as he set a high pace, with three Tudor riders on his week, followed by De Lie and Brennan. Tudor took over the front with one kilometre to try and deliver Trentin to victory.
Lyne has been involved in professional cycling for more than 15 years in both news reporting and sports marketing. She founded Podium Insight in 2008, quickly becoming a trusted source for news of the North American professional cycling world. She was the first to successfully use social media to consistently provide timely and live race updates for all fans. She is proud to have covered men's and women's news equally during her tenure at the helm of the site. Her writing has appeared on Cyclingnews and other news sites.
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