Hermans Wins De Brabantse Pijls

16 April 2015 11:16

Ben Hermans of BMC has won the 55th De Brabantse Pijls- La Flèche Brabançonne race in Belgium.

There was a strong field including last year's winner Phillipe Gilbert of BMC for this 205.6km race from De Brabantse Pijl to Overijse, which featured no less than twenty six climbs.

For the first fifty kilometres, no-one was able to mount a serious attack but there was a split in the peloton and a group of twenty riders did put some distance between themselves and the second group.

Arnaud Gerard of Bretagne Seche Enviroment and Marc De Maar of Team Roompot attacked out of the front group and after sixty six kilometres, they had a lead of eighteen seconds.

However, they too were brought back and Thomas De Gendt of Lotto Soudal, Alex Kirsch of Cult Energy and Anthony Delaplace of Bretagne Seche Enviroment, formed a new break which was 4.16 ahead with 121kms left.

The three leaders were 2.29 with 79kms to go before there was a crash at the back of the peloton.

Ten kilometres later and Kirsch was dropped as the riders started on three laps of 23.4 km with five hills in the Hagaard, Hertstraat, Holstheide, IJskelderlaan and Schavei on each lap.

With 37kms left, De Gendt and Delaplace were caught and there was an attack by Tim De Troyer, Ben Hermans, Bartlomiej Matysiak and David Tanner who launched another attack with Hermans.

Onto the final lap and Tanner and Hermans were 27 seconds clear of Vermote, Voss, Dillier and Leukemans, who had taken over the chase. Van Hecke joined them with Devenyns bridging over.

This group was caught by another group of Vakoc, Felline, Pauwels, M.Terpstra, Arashiro, Campenaerts, Selvaggi and Canola.who were twenty five seconds down on Tanner and Hermans with fourteen kilometres left.

Tanner and Hermans extended the lead to thirty four seconds with six kilometres left.

Hermans, dropped Tanner and went for victory. He was chased by an elite group which included Gilbert, Matthews, Gallopin and Haas but he got over the Schavei climb and survived an attack by Alaphilippe to take the victory. Second was Michael Matthews and third was Philippe Gilbert.

Source: DSG