Belgian Road Championships: Tim Wellens secures men’s road race title with 41km solo attack

UAE Team Emirates-XRG’s Tim Wellens soloed to victory in the men’s Belgian national championships road race, attacking riders including Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep) 41km from the finish to claim the title.

It was an attritional, 230km race starting and finishing in Binche, in what is considered one of the hardest and most prestigious national championships. In the last 50km, a small leading group emerged, from which Wellens attacked, and no one could react.

Evenepoel fought to secure second, whilst Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Deceuninck) took third.

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Despite its length, the 230km men’s race was attacking and aggressive from the gun, with big-name riders and various breakaways getting involved in the first half of the race, though no clear breakaway of the day went – no one wanted to risk letting a group go that would have to be chased down.

With still 100km to go, a decisive split in the peloton saw a front group with several interesting riders emerge, including Evenepoel, Philipsen, Wellens, Jasper Stuyven (Lidl-Trek), Victor Campenaerts (Visma-Lease a Bike) and Florian Vermeersch (UAE Team Emirates-XRG).

Despite the calibre of riders who didn’t make the split – like Tim Merlier (Soudal-QuickStep) and Thibau Nys (Lidl-Trek) – the second group seemed to be defeated fairly quickly, and the front group built up a solid lead.

For the next 50km, various riders tried to attack in the front, including Evenepoel and Campenaerts, which did thin out the group, but no rider could actually make the elastic snap and get away alone.

Finally, as the riders were tiring, Wellens attacked at just the right moment with 41km to go, and when Evenepoel didn’t immediately react, the UAE rider had the momentum to go solo, and he would not be caught again. The gap was never huge, but the chasing group disintegrated – partly thanks to Vermeersch’s interference for his teammate – instead of working together, allowing Wellens to solo to the win.

Evenepoel finished second, 38 seconds down, whilst Philipsen also attacked the group to finish alone in third, a few seconds behind Evenepoel.

Results

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