The Belgian Nationwide Biking Federation has confirmed the lineup for the Olympic elite males’s highway race and time trial, with each Remco Evenepoel and Wout van Aert down to participate in each occasions.
Tiesj Benoot and Jasper Stuyven may even be participating within the highway race for Belgium with Evenepoel and Van Aert within the four-man squad.
The Belgians have additionally printed their 4 reserves for the occasions, named in alphabetical order. Arnaud De Lie, Yves Lampaert, Jasper Philipsen and Tim Wellens are the 4 substitutes.
“4 riders just isn’t a lot, particularly when you contemplate all of the choices we’ve in Belgium,” Sven Vanthourenhout informed media, together with Sporza.be at a press convention on Tuesday. “However I’m satisfied that we will journey to Paris with a really robust and skilled group. Our aim is a medal.”
Vanthourenhout identified that whereas Van Aert and Evenepoel have taken eight highway race medals throughout at worldwide, continental and Olympic ranges between them, each Stuyven and Benoot had been all-rounders with prolonged expertise in help.
“They’ve additionally meant rather a lot to the federation. They’re guys who’re at all times there at vital moments and likewise know what it’s wish to win a giant race,” Vanthourenhout stated, referring to Stuyven’s victory in Milan-San Remo again in 2021 and Benoot’s triumphs in Strade Bianche and Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne in 2018 and 2023 respectively.
Moreover, even discarding Evenepoel and Van Aert’s observe report each in one-day Classics and Highway World Championships – within the latter alone, Evenepoel has rainbow jerseys at each junior and senior stage within the highway and TT occasions whereas Wout van Aert has paid a number of visits to the rostrum in each specialities – signifies that Belgium will likely be one of many key groups to look at in each occasions.
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“We have now a variety of confidence in them. Our aim is to get a medal and I hope we will try this with one in every of these 4 guys,” stated Vanthourenhout.
With one rider lower than in Tokyo for Belgium, Vanthourenhout additionally identified that “An Olympic highway race may be very particular anyway, and it’ll now be much more particular as a result of we’ll begin with fairly a small peloton. That’s not rather a lot for a race of 270 kilometres.”
“Furthermore, that peloton doesn’t embody each nation on the stage of quite a few European international locations.
“Tactically will probably be a really troublesome race,” says Vanthourenhout. “That is why you want a variety of expertise in your group and we’ve it. The circuit just isn’t flat and troublesome, with two cobbled climbs. It’s a robust Classics course.”
Each the elite girls’s and elite males’s time trials are scheduled for July 27, adopted by the elite males’s highway race every week in a while Saturday, August 3 and the ladies’s elite highway race on Sunday, August 4.
In the identical press convention, the Belgian Federation additionally named a number of Nationwide MTB Champions Jens Schuermans and Pierre de Froidmont for the lads’s occasion in Paris, and and Emeline Detilleux for the ladies’s race. In the meantime, Ruben Gommers and Elke Vanhoof will likely be racing of their respective classes for Belgium in Paris in BMX.
The Belgian girls’s highway lineup for Paris – additionally anticipated to be one of the crucial vital of their occasions – will likely be introduced on July 6.
