Lorena Wiebes won the women’s Scheldeprijs after a superb lead-out from her SD Worx teammates.
“This was a goal for me. It’s already again our 4th victory in a row. The fact that we fight for each other is the key to our success," Wiebes said.
Wiebes then hit out but left a gap along the barriers. Charlotte Kool (Team DSM) came up along the barriers, but Wiebes held on to win for a third consecutive victory.
How it unfolded
Scheldprijs is the only Flanders Classics event that remains at the 1.1 level to allow an opportunity for smaller Belgian teams to take the start line and compete against some of the WorldTeams.
The women raced a 131km route along circuits in Schoten, which included five cobblestone sectors first along the Sint Jabsesteernweg and then four trips over the Broekstraat.
Early attacks came from Mieke Docx (Lotto Dstny) and Alice Palazzi (To Girls Fassa Bortolo), but their efforts were short lived, and they were back in the main field with 75km to go.
It wasn't long before a counter move set off that included five riders: Amandine Fouquenet (Arkéa Pro Cycling Team), Kelly Van Den Steen (Duolar-Chevalmeire Cycling Team), Babette van der Wolf (Lifeplus Wahoo), Katrijn de Clercq (Lotto Dstny) and Simone Boilard (St Michel-Mavic-Auber 93).
The five riders pushed their lead out to 23 seconds but with two laps of the circuit to go, their efforts almost seemed doomed from the start as the powerful SD Worx squad led the peloton to support Wiebes in a bunch sprint.
The breakaway gained more firepower, however, when Sara Van de Vel (Fenix-Deceuninck) and Noëlle Rüetschi (AG Insurance-NXTG U23) bridged across, and with 20km to go, their gap increased to 1:30.
On the final lap, the breakaway lost steam as Van de Vel, Fouquenet and Van den Steen were distanced, and then the rest of the group was caught just nine kilometres from the finish line.
The peloton intact, teams SD Worx, DSM and Fenix-Deceuninck did the lion's share of the work with organised lead-outs for their respective sprinters.
SD Worx was the most dominant squad, with four riders supporting Wiebes, and it was Gent-Wevelgem winner Marlen Reusser who led the field under the flame rouge in a perfectly-performed lead-out to deliver Wiebes to the victory.
Results
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