Arnaud De Lie (Lotto-Dstny) has insisted that despite his recent success in Binche-Chimay-Binche, there is no guarantee that he will produce a similar result next Sunday in Paris-Tours. Nor yet does he feel there is any pressure on him to do so.
De Lie, 22, told Belgian newspaper Dernière Heure on Thursday that he believes that Paris-Tours' extremely technical, rugged finale – comprising 10km of vineyard dirt tracks and gravel pathways on the hills overlooking the River Loire – meant that when it came to producing top-level performances, luck was always a factor.
Furthermore, De Lie faces a formidable line-up on Sunday's 213km effort, with no less than five former winners of Paris-Tours present – Arnaud Démare (Arkea-B&B Hotels), 2023 champion Riley Sheehan (Israel-Premier Tech), John Degenkolb (DSM-Firmenich-PostNL), Soren Kragh Andersen (Alpecin-Deceuninck) and Matteo Trentin (Tudor ProCycling).
The in-form Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Deceuninck), fresh from his victory in Sparkasse Münsterland Giro, where De Lie finished eighth on Thursday, will also be present for France's last road race of the 2024 season.
Winning in Binche-Chimay-Binche on Tuesday ahead of Philipsen, De Lie told the Paris-Tours race website earlier this week, "has boosted my confidence. I'd been feeling a bit under the weather since the GP de Wallonie two weeks ago, so I was quite apprehensive. In the end, though, I came out on top."
"Paris–Tours is one of my goals. It's a lovely race and, what's more, it has gravel tracks, which I simply adore."
However, as he added to Derniere Heure, "I'm not putting myself under pressure regarding this course. Nowadays in Paris-Tours" – which up until a few years ago was held purely on normal roads, rather than including vineyard tracks – "you also need a lot of luck."
"I've done Paris-Tours three times, and each time I had setbacks with crashes and punctures. Even if you do the perfect race, you can't control the outcome."
De Lie's misfortune in his two participations in Paris-Tours meant that the first time, in 2022, he abandoned after getting involved in a crash some 60 kilometres from the finish. Then in 2023, he punctured three or four times in quick succession late and consequently once again opted to call it a day.
However, when De Lie says he enjoys racing across gravel, it's not a contradiction, as shown by his victory in the Tro Bro León, which has plenty of similar off-road sections like Paris-Tours, this Spring. What that experience means, though, is that he is also realistic about how such challenging terrain, even if he likes it, can potentially skew the result.
The reigning Belgian national champion commented that he remembered how his former teammate Frederik Frison had been the victim of extreme bad luck in Paris-Tours when "he was fighting for victory. But then he punctured in the last gravel sector. His race was destroyed as a result.
"So I'm going to ride Paris-Tours without feeling any kind of pressure. If I get a good result, then so much the better. If I don't, then so much the worse."
