Arnaud De Lie back in business as Lotto sprinter rediscovers his top level
Arnaud De Lie’s victory at the Renewi Tour has put an end to any doubts about his form. The 23-year-old Belgian, long seen as one of the sport’s most promising sprinters, struggled through a difficult spring but has now found his way back to winning ways. His trainer Kobe Vermeire, brought in earlier this year, told Het Nieuwsblad how they managed to rebuild De Lie’s confidence and condition step by step.
“The mental pressure was removed,” Vermeire explained to Het Nieuwsblad. “Fourteen hours in an altitude tent is not fun. That’s gone. We went back to basics. No unnecessary extras, just good training and enjoying the bike again.”
That return to simplicity marked a turning point. De Lie had previously experimented with methods such as heat and altitude training, but those routines ended up draining him. “Arnaud had done heat training in the past and it worked, but it’s a lot of hassle,” Vermeire said. “He’s simply someone who loves to ride. That feeling had to return.”
Vermeire’s approach was clear: strip everything back and reset. “The idea was: we’ll do the basics really well and avoid doing ‘weird’ things. Take altitude tents: you spend twelve to fourteen hours a day in there. That means you can’t do anything else, just scrolling on your phone. That’s not fun. And an altitude tent also demands a lot from your body. If Arnaud doesn’t feel great in training, he starts to doubt. So we left it out. We made a kind of restart, building again from zero.”
Vermeire admitted the reset came with challenges. “He was coming out of a difficult period,” he said. “He solved that himself, I had little to do with it. After that it was about building step by step, not trying to do too much at once. If you get the basics right, you’ve almost done the whole job. With someone as talented as Arnaud, if he’s fresh and feels good, then he performs.”
The shift became visible in July. De Lie rode the Tour de France without pressure, using the three weeks as a training block rather than chasing results. It gave him rhythm, restored his confidence and laid the groundwork for his Renewi Tour victory, where he beat Mathieu van der Poel.
Now the focus shifts to what comes next. Keeping De Lie at this level will be just as important as bringing him back to it. The plan stretches beyond the late-season races into next spring, when the classics return.
“After the races in Canada I’ll sit down with Arnaud to see how we approach next year,” Vermeire said. “What’s certain is that we’ll make sure he focuses at the right moments and is given a bit more freedom at others.
"If at some point he says: ‘I can’t live at 100 percent for the next three weeks,’ then we’ll move that target back to 95 percent and only later push it to 100. Heat or altitude training might be considered, but we’ll discuss it carefully. We can’t push Arnaud over the edge. With his talent, and the training he does, he will always be good.”
