Jumbo-Visma's Tiesj Benoot and Nathan Van Hooydonck go 1-2 at Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne, Bahrain-Victorious' Matej Mohoric in third(Image credit: Getty Images)
Tiesj Benoot completed Jumbo-Visma’s domination of Opening Weekend by winning Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne from a five-man break ahead of his teammate Nathan Van Hooydonck.
Matej Mohoric (Bahrain Victorious) took third place ahead of Tim Wellens (UAE Team Emirates) and Taco van der Hoorn (Intermarché-Wanty-Gobert), while Christophe Laporte (Jumbo-Visma) won the bunch sprint for sixth.
Jumbo-Visma had dictated the terms of the race when they splintered the peloton with sustained forcing on Le Bourliquet, and once the decisive break took shape after Wellens’ acceleration on the following climb of Mont Saint-Laurent with 75km to go, there was already a sense of inevitability about the outcome.
The five leaders would carry a buffer of a minute into the 12km finishing circuit around Kuurne, where Van Hooydonck had appeared to be the Jumbo strongman, launching the first attack with a shade under 5km remaining before shutting down a response from Mohoric shortly afterwards. Benoot made his own probing effort with 3.7km remaining before Van Hooydonck launched another sustained effort with 3km to go that ultimately proved the undoing of the Jumbo-Visma duo’s most redoubtable foe.
Although Mohoric was able to stitch the break back together again there, he confessed that the effort had come at a cost. “I completely destroyed my legs there, and I was just hoping Tiesj wouldn’t counter straight afterwards,” he admitted.
Van Hooydonck had another dig beneath the flamme rouge, with Wellens this time closing him down, but Benoot sensed his opportunity as the leaders swung into the finishing straight with a brisk tailwind at their backs.
A shade under 800 metres from the line, Benoot jumped clear along the barriers, and although Wellens made an initial attempt to reel him in, he desisted with 400 metres remaining. From there, Benoot simply had to keep his gear turning over to seal the victory while Van Hooydonck delivered the ineluctable Jumbo-Visma one-two with a crisp sprint.
A day after Dylan van Baarle’s solo victory at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, it was another exhibition from a Jumbo-Visma Classics squad that had spent most of February cloistered at altitude atop Mount Teide. And all this without their leading man Wout van Aert, who will only begin his road season at Strade Bianche next week.
Benoot’s obvious gifts as a rider have long been at odds with his relatively meagre palmarès. This was only the fourth win of his professional career and his very first on Belgian roads. Victory at Strade Bianche in 2018 had underscored his potential in the Classics, however, and this Spring, as part of an overwhelming strong Jumbo-Visma guard, he may have scope to fulfil it.
“It is fantastic to be able to win like this after a difficult period,” said Benoot, whose 2022 season was cut short when he fractured vertebrae in a training crash in Livigno in August.
“Nathan went very hard with 3km to go, and Mohoric had a lot of trouble closing that gap. I went after the last corner, with 800m left, and I managed to make a small gap. I knew I had to keep going, and if they still caught me, then Nathan could win the sprint.”
How it unfolded
Van der Hoorn, freshly returned from a training camp in Colombia, had long made a target of Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne, and before the race got underway, he stated his intention to infiltrate the early break. The Dutchman was as good as his word, punching clear in the opening kilometres with Gilles De Wilde (Flanders-Baloise), Lluis Mas (Movistar) and Daniel Oss (TotalEnergies).
The move expanded to six riders shortly afterwards when Guillaume Van Keirsbulck (Bingoal WB) and Matthew Gibson (Human Powered Health) bridged across, and the escapees would soon amass an advantage of seven minutes over the peloton.
Van der Hoorn and company were braced, of course, for the inevitable reaction from Jumbo-Visma, who had dominated the terms of engagement at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad 24 hours earlier, and the Dutch squad duly began to dial up the intensity as the terrain grew more rugged on the approach to the midpoint to the race.
The increase in speed over the climbs of Berg Ten Houte and La Houppe also contributed to some tension in the peloton, with Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Deceuninck) among the fallers in a crash that split the peloton. European champion Fabio Jakobsen (Soudal-QuickStep) was safely aboard, however, and his presence only encouraged Jumbo-Visma to force the issue from distance.
All the while, the break’s advantage was shrinking rapidly, and the race took on a new guise on the climb of Le Bourliquet with 82km remaining, where the Jumbo-Visma trio of Van Hooydonck, Benoot and Jan Tratnik surged clear of the reduced peloton in the latest, startling demonstration of the team’s collective strength.
Mohoric, Wellens and Sagan made it across by the top of the climb, where the remnants of the early break was swept up. The selection was refined still further on the subsequent, cobbled ascent of Mont Saint-Laurent, where Wellens attacked, and only Mohoric, Benoot and the resilient Van der Hoorn could follow.
Van Hooydonck, meanwhile, managed to bridge across after a spirited pursuit, leaving two Jumbo-Visma riders in the five-man break with 73km to go. Come the Kruisberg-Hotond combination, the quintet had 48 seconds in hand on a reduced peloton in which Lotto-Dstny were the sole chasers on behalf of Arnaud De Lie.
Trek-Segafredo would join the pursuit on the Knokteberg, by which the break’s advantage was out to 1:30, and the gap would increase to a maximum of 1:45 over the final ascent of the Kluisberg with a shade over 52km remaining.
With the climbing out of the way, the chasing peloton grew more coherent, with Florian Sénéchal now riding on behalf of Jakobsen and Cofidis also joining the fray, but the gap remained stubbornly north of a minute.
Van der Hoorn’s anticipated attack never came – “I saw he wasn’t pulling like the others. If he wanted to win, he should have followed Tiesj,” Mohoric complained – but the five still had enough cohesion to enter the finishing circuit with a winning lead.
Barry Ryan was Head of Features at Cyclingnews. He has covered professional cycling since 2010, reporting from the Tour de France, Giro d’Italia and events from Argentina to Japan. His writing has appeared in The Independent, Procycling and Cycling Plus. He is the author of The Ascent: Sean Kelly, Stephen Roche and the Rise of Irish Cycling’s Golden Generation, published by Gill Books.
