Our team will have several cards to play Tuesday, at the 51st edition of the Belgian race.
Coming off the back of a strong and fertile Opening Weekend, Deceuninck – Quick-Step will go fully motivated into Le Samyn, a race won by our team on four occasions since 2009, most recently last year, when Florian Sénéchal emerged victorious from a small group after a superb collective effort of the Wolfpack, scoring his maiden pro victory.
The 201.9km-long course between Quaregnon and Dour has everything you could wish for from a one-day race: cobblestones, hills, and small and narrow roads, all ingredients for an exciting race, where we’ll line up a squad comprising defending champion Sénéchal, Davide Ballerini, Tim Declercq, Alvaro Hodeg – who will be making his first outing in Europe this season – Iljo Keisse, neo-pro Jannik Steimle and Bert Van Lerberghe.
“Le Samyn is a very hard race, we know that from the past years, so we are going there with a strong team. The parcours hasn’t changed and if it will be windy, then we’ll have to pay attention and make sure we are in the right echelon”, sports director Rik Van Slycke said. “Florian took a beautiful win here last season and is in good shape, Alvaro is fast and we’ll look to him if it comes down to a bunch sprint, and they are just two of the options we have for Tuesday. We are motivated after the team’s excellent display last weekend in Belgium and France and we will try to get again a good result.”
Photo credit: ©Tim De Waele / Getty Images
Bert Van Lerberghe