Lotto introduced on Thursday that Arnaud De Lie won’t compete in Milan-San Remo on March 22 as deliberate. The Belgian champion has struggled with sickness and it has affected his coaching.
Rather than head into La Primavera not feeling 100%, De Lie will give attention to the races earlier within the week. He will race Nokere Koerse on March 19 and has added the GP de Denain on March 20 to his calendar.
It’s a second setback for De Lie, who postponed his season begin within the GP Castellon and Clássica Comunitat Valenciana 1969 in January after injuring his knee in a crash throughout coaching.
The incident hardly slowed the 22-year-old down, as he received his first race of 2025 on stage 3 of the Étoile de Bessèges. However, he dropped out of the Volta ao Algarve two weeks later.
De Lie is a essential rider for Lotto this season, because the workforce purpose to realize sufficient factors towards rejoining the WorldTour as the present three-year promotion/relegation cycle involves an finish on the shut of this season.
He was liable for 20% of the workforce’s factors in 2023 and 2024, and the workforce have since misplaced different key points-scoring riders akin to Maxim Van Gils, Victor Campenaerts, and Florian Vermeersch to different WorldTour groups.
After two sturdy seasons, Lotto are struggling up to now this 12 months and are presently a distant twenty fifth within the UCI Team Rankings for 2025.
However, their 2023 and 2024 seasons have been profitable sufficient that the Belgian outfit are nonetheless ninth within the gathered 2023-2025 factors totals up to now.
Since the UCI’s rule change in 2020 that utilized ‘sporting standards’ to the WorldTour necessities, groups should now be within the high 18 of the three-year rankings to be promoted to or stay within the sport’s high tier.
Lotto misplaced out on their licence within the final cycle together with Israel-Premier Tech, with Arkéa-B&B Hotels and Intermarché-Wanty being promoted.
This time, it is Arkéa-B&B Hotels and XDS Astana who’re most at risk of relegation for the 2026-2028 WorldTour.
