{"id":28633,"date":"2026-03-01T18:32:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-01T18:32:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/28633\/"},"modified":"2026-03-01T18:32:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-01T18:32:07","slug":"brennan-and-visma-lease-a-bikes-kuurne-story-is-even-more-special-than-you-might-think","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/28633\/","title":{"rendered":"Brennan and Visma | Lease a Bike\u2019s Kuurne story is even more special than you might think"},"content":{"rendered":"

Matthew Brennan<\/a> arguably shouldn\u2019t have been able to start Kuurne\u2013Brussels\u2013Kuurne<\/a> at all \u2014 but the fact the 20-year-old Briton rides for Visma | Lease a Bike<\/a> made one thing clear on Sunday: he\u2019s made of tough stuff. After crashing heavily in Omloop Het Nieuwsblad just 24 hours earlier, Brennan still lined up in Kortrijk battered and bruised \u2014 and then went on to win<\/a>. The rest is history.<\/p>\n

Brennan hit the deck in the finale of Omloop on Saturday and didn\u2019t finish the race. The medical verdict afterwards was blunt: scrapes and bruises. In the mixed zone before Kuurne\u2013Brussels\u2013Kuurne, Brennan played it down. He didn\u2019t reveal too much, but admitted the crash had been hard and that he was in plenty of pain. He also spoke about nerves.<\/p>\n

Sports director Maarten Wynants saw Brennan on the massage table on Saturday evening and feared the worst, but the main man already had his mind on the next race. \u201cI wanted to forget the day, because there was a lot of frustration \u2014 and that also led to the crash,\u201d the stage winner said at the press conference to IDLProCycling.com. \u201cI was lucky with how I came out of it, with only a few scrapes and bruises.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCrashing at 60 km\/h (around 37 mph) isn\u2019t nice \u2014 especially when you realise you have to go back into that same chaos a day later,\u201d Brennan laughed. Yet he did exactly that. \u201cMentally we switched and started thinking about how we would approach Kuurne\u2013Brussels\u2013Kuurne. I\u2019m quite analytical, and sometimes it\u2019s easy to improve things. I can bring that across to the team.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more below the video<\/p>\n

Brennan had to grit his teeth at a crucial moment in Kuurne\u2013Brussels\u2013Kuurne<\/p>\n

It sounds simple, but Brennan admitted he didn\u2019t feel comfortable throughout Kuurne\u2013Brussels\u2013Kuurne. \u201cMy whole left side is quite swollen, so especially on the cobbles that wasn\u2019t nice,\u201d he said. \u201cBut mentally \u2014 with positioning \u2014 it was madness anyway. I saw so many near-crashes. That\u2019s also why I missed the move halfway through the race for a moment.\u201d Teammate Pietro Mattio brought Brennan back.<\/p>\n

From there, Visma | Lease a Bike barely left the front. \u201cWe had the chance to take control and I felt good,\u201d Brennan explained. \u201cWe could throw a few fast guys overboard and that would help us for the finish. We went all-in and wanted to hurt the other teams. That put us in a situation where we could finish it off.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his first interview after the finish, Brennan also praised his lead-out \u2014 which, in his words, made it almost impossible to get wrong. \u201cEveryone did their job brilliantly. Laporte did such a good lead-out that I basically only had to do the easy part in the last few hundred metres.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more below the video<\/p>\n

Brennan shrugs off pressure and comparisons<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a great story \u2014 and one that\u2019s only just being written. Where are Brennan\u2019s limits? The Briton wants to find out too. \u201cI\u2019d love to do Milan\u2013San Remo, the Tour of Flanders and Paris\u2013Roubaix in good shape, but 200 guys in the peloton will want that,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ll also do Gent\u2013Wevelgem. As a team we want to get the best out of ourselves in every race. We\u2019re chasing results.\u201d<\/p>\n

Winning the biggest Classics is the dream, but Brennan stressed the importance of patience and consistency. Comparisons with Wout van Aert<\/a>? \u201cNice,\u201d but nothing more than that. \u201cIf I can even head in the direction of that kind of career, I\u2019d be super happy. Wout helps me a lot \u2014 he\u2019s a really good guy. He\u2019s very personal and never acts too big to help. A really great teammate.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t feel any pressure from the team,\u201d Brennan added. \u201cI know my limits and the team knows them too. Based on that you can plan things, but it\u2019s still cycling. In the end, it\u2019s the work as a team that determines whether you can win or not. There\u2019s a really relaxed and welcoming atmosphere here \u2014 nobody takes things personally. We want to improve together. That\u2019s what it\u2019s about.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Matthew Brennan arguably shouldn\u2019t have been able to start Kuurne\u2013Brussels\u2013Kuurne at all \u2014 but the fact the 20-year-old…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28634,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[104],"tags":[211,210,2813,16937,14800,18035,18034,14799],"class_list":["post-28633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brussels","tag-belgium","tag-brussels","tag-cycling","tag-idl-productions","tag-kuurne-brussels-kuurne","tag-matthew-brennan","tag-visma-lease-a-bike","tag-wout-van-aert"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28633\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}