Arnaud De Lie unravels in Kuurne, but Lotto stays upbeat: ‘He is further than we expected’

The surprise came on Mont Saint Laurent, when cameras picked up the tail of the bunch and De Lie was suddenly there. Only minutes earlier, Lotto had been driving the pace on Le Bourliquet, with De Lie actively pushing for the move to stick. 

Performance manager Aike Visbeek explained the intent was clear. “Arnaud said: we are going to do it,” Visbeek said to De Standaard. “He said he felt super. But maybe he blew himself up.”

On the cobbles of Mont Saint Laurent, with ramps hitting 17 percent, De Lie could not latch on again after taking supplies. He drifted into a group that included Jonathan Milan and Dylan Groenewegen, riders who had previously been distanced during Lotto’s earlier pressure. By the time the peloton reached the Kluisberg, De Lie was last wheel and then stepped off the bike. Afterwards he did not speak to the media.

Visbeek urged calm when assessing the bigger picture. “Oh no, not at all,” he said when asked if the team should worry. “We saw a fighting Arnaud. He went deep in the Omloop, it is very possible he got a backlash from that now. Before that he rode the Tour of the Algarve, but that was a relatively easy stage race, without really racing hard on two consecutive days. He does not have that hardness yet.”

The team returns to Omloop Het Nieuwsblad as the more meaningful reference point, because De Lie was in the fight late before bad luck intervened. With four kilometres to go before the Muur, someone clipped his rear wheel, forcing him into a chase that ultimately left him 62nd on the day.

“Frustrating,” De Lie said then. “But the feeling compared to last year is completely different.” Lotto’s staff felt that Omloop performance exceeded expectations, especially after the ankle injury De Lie suffered this winter when he fell down the stairs at home. 

“If you take that into account, Arnaud is further now than we dared to hope five weeks ago,” Visbeek said. “If you had told us then that Arnaud would ride an Omloop like that, we would have considered it very optimistic.”

Looking ahead, the team sees Tirreno Adriatico as the next step in building form. “I am certain he will make progress stage by stage. I have no doubt about that,” Visbeek said. “A stage race like that works for Arnaud. We have seen it before, for example at the Tour of Switzerland on the way to the Tour.”