Cycling: Jasper Stuyven (Trek-Segafredo) won Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne. The 23-year-old Belgian attacked with 15km to go and drove as a soloist to his first win of the season. Alexander Kristoff (Katusha) won the peloton's sprint ahead of Nacer Bouhanni (Cofidis).
The opening weekend of the classics season is firmly in Belgian hands – after Greg van Avermaet's victory yesterday at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, his compatriot Jasper Stuyven (Trek-Segafredo) made the local fans cheer for the second time today. With a great attack from the leading group about 15km from the finish, Stuyven set the signs for victory and duped Boonen, Sagan and van Avermaet.
In once again fantastic but sometimes very windy outside conditions, the starting signal for the second part of the first classic weekend of the season was given at 12:00 in Kuurne, Belgium. Like yesterday, a fairly large escape group formed shortly after the start. Today, eleven pros rode in the first group of leaders – above all, pros from the ProContinental teams could be found here, who wanted to give their teams and sponsors valuable time in the limelight of the cameras. After less than 50km the gap had grown to over eight minutes.
In the field, the teams from Lotto Soudal and Etixx – Quick-Step in particular set the pace at the beginning, although today the peloton was much less hectic than yesterday and there were also fewer falls. There was still a moment of shock when Stig Broeckx (Lotto Soudal) was hit by a motorbike and fell badly. Although he tried to get back into the race, he gave up in severe pain and is currently being examined in the hospital. Emotions quickly boiled up on Twitter – you can clearly see in the TV pictures that the motorcyclist would have had enough time to avoid Broeckx, who swerved, or to brake.
#KBK – Chute de Broeckx (@Lotto_Soudal) On @KuurneBxlKuurne, touch by une moto !!
— La GazetteDes Sports (@GazetteDesSport) 28. February 2016
After about a third of the 200,8km to be driven, the profile became wavy and the characteristic slipways brought life to the race, which had been very quiet up to this point. A new leading group of around 15 riders emerged, in which the favorites to win Tom Boonen, Julien Vermote (both Etixx – Quick-Step), Greg van Avaermaet (BMC), Peter Sagan (Tinkoff), Jasper Stuyven (Trek -Segafredo) and Alexander Kristoff (Katusha) were on the road.
The lead of the new leading group leveled off at seconds and it was clear early on that the winner of the day would come from this very group - the field had great problems reducing the lead, also because almost all top teams had at least one driver in the front and were not interested in building up a lot of pressure. 15km before the finish, Jasper Stuyven made the decisive move, attacking from the leading group and using the brief disagreement over the pursuit work to tear a significant gap.
Boonen, van Avermaet and co. tried everything again to catch up with the soloist at the top, but Stuyven defied the strong wind on the flat final kilometers and confidently drove to his first win of the season. The field behind him had closed again just before the finish line when the escapees were caught by the peloton. Alexander Kristoff won the sprint for second place ahead of Nacer Bouhanni.
Final result Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne 2016
Driver | Country | Team | Time | |
---|---|---|---|---|
1. | Jasper stuyven | Belgium | Trek-Segafredo | |
2. | alexander kristoff | Norway | Katusha | |
3. | Bouhanni born | France | Cofidis, Solution Credits | |
4. | Dylan Groenewegen | Netherlands | LottoNL Jumbo | |
5. | Lukasz Wisniowski | Poland | Etixx - Quick Step | |
6. | Niccolo Boniface | Italy | Trek-Segafredo | |
7. | Peter Sagan | Slovakia | Tinkoff | |
8. | Edward Theuns | Belgium | Trek-Segafredo | |
9. | Jonas Vangechten | Belgium | AMI Cycling | |
10. | Scott Thwaites | Great Britain | Bora Argon 18 |