The Belgian National Cycling Federation has confirmed the lineup for the Olympic elite males’s highway race and time trial, with each Remco Evenepoel and Wout van Aert down to participate in each occasions.
Tiesj Benoot and Jasper Stuyven may even be participating within the highway race for Belgium with Evenepoel and Van Aert within the four-man squad.
The Belgians have additionally printed their 4 reserves for the occasions, named in alphabetical order. Arnaud De Lie, Yves Lampaert, Jasper Philipsen and Tim Wellens are the 4 substitutes.
“Four riders is just not a lot, particularly should you take into account all of the choices we now have in Belgium,” Sven Vanthourenhout instructed media, together with Sporza.be at a press convention on Tuesday. “But I’m satisfied that we are able to journey to Paris with a really robust and skilled group. Our objective is a medal.”
Vanthourenhout identified that whereas Van Aert and Evenepoel have taken eight highway race medals throughout at worldwide, continental and Olympic ranges between them, each Stuyven and Benoot had been all-rounders with prolonged expertise in assist.
“They have additionally meant quite a bit to the federation. They are guys who’re all the time there at vital moments and in addition know what it’s prefer to win a giant race,” Vanthourenhout mentioned, referring to Stuyven’s victory in Milan-San Remo again in 2021 and Benoot’s triumphs in Strade Bianche and Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne in 2018 and 2023 respectively.
Furthermore, even discarding Evenepoel and Van Aert’s monitor file each in one-day Classics and Road World Championships – within the latter alone, Evenepoel has rainbow jerseys at each junior and senior degree within the highway and TT occasions whereas Wout van Aert has paid a number of visits to the rostrum in each specialities – signifies that Belgium shall be one of many key groups to look at in each occasions.
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“We have a number of confidence in them. Our objective is to get a medal and I hope we are able to do this with one among these 4 guys,” mentioned Vanthourenhout.
With one rider lower than in Tokyo for Belgium, Vanthourenhout additionally identified that “An Olympic highway race could be very particular anyway, and it’ll now be much more particular as a result of we are going to begin with fairly a small peloton. That is just not quite a bit for a race of 270 kilometres.”
“Moreover, that peloton doesn’t embrace each nation on the degree of plenty of European international locations.
“Tactically it is going to be a really tough race,” says Vanthourenhout. “That’s why you want a number of expertise in your group and we now have it. The circuit is just not flat and tough, with two cobbled climbs. It is a tricky Classics course.”
Both the elite girls’s and elite males’s time trials are scheduled for July 27, adopted by the elite males’s highway race every week afterward Saturday, August 3 and the ladies’s elite highway race on Sunday, August 4.
In the identical press convention, the Belgian Federation additionally named a number of National MTB Champions Jens Schuermans and Pierre de Froidmont for the boys’s occasion in Paris, and and Emeline Detilleux for the ladies’s race. Meanwhile, Ruben Gommers and Elke Vanhoof shall be racing of their respective classes for Belgium in Paris in BMX.
The Belgian girls’s highway lineup for Paris – additionally anticipated to be one of the crucial vital of their occasions – shall be introduced on July 6.