The Belgian Nationwide Biking 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.
“4 riders isn’t a lot, particularly in the event you contemplate all of the choices we’ve in Belgium,” Sven Vanthourenhout advised media, together with Sporza.be at a press convention on Tuesday. “However I’m satisfied that we will journey to Paris with a really sturdy and skilled workforce. Our purpose 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’ve additionally meant loads to the federation. They’re guys who’re at all times there at vital moments and likewise know what it’s wish to win an enormous 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.
Moreover, even discarding Evenepoel and Van Aert’s monitor file each in one-day Classics and Highway 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 – implies that Belgium might be one of many key groups to observe in each occasions.
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“We have now quite a lot of confidence in them. Our purpose is to get a medal and I hope we will 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 may 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’s not loads for a race of 270 kilometres.”
“Furthermore, that peloton doesn’t embrace each nation on the degree of a variety of European international locations.
“Tactically it will likely be a really tough race,” says Vanthourenhout. “That is why you want quite a lot of expertise in your workforce and we’ve it. The circuit isn’t flat and tough, with two cobbled climbs. It’s a robust Classics course.”
Each the elite ladies’s and elite males’s time trials are scheduled for July 27, adopted by the elite males’s highway race per week in a while 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 Nationwide MTB Champions Jens Schuermans and Pierre de Froidmont for the boys’s occasion in Paris, and and Emeline Detilleux for the ladies’s race. In the meantime, Ruben Gommers and Elke Vanhoof might be racing of their respective classes for Belgium in Paris in BMX.
The Belgian ladies’s highway lineup for Paris – additionally anticipated to be one of the vital vital of their occasions – might be introduced on July 6.
