photo credits @ DDV
Neilson Powless (EF Education-EasyPost) triumphed in today’s Dwars door Vlaanderen, shattering Wout Van Aert and his Visma-Lease a Bike teammates’ hopes of victory, after the American ermged victroius in a sprint finish ahead of Van Aert, Tiesj Benoot and Matteo Jorgenson in Waregem, Belgium.
The quartet escaped with 75km remaining, with Visma-Lease a Bike dominating in numbers. However, Powless upset the Dutch squad with a final surge that saw Van Aert drop his head in defeat as he saw victory escape him and his team.
Meanwhile, Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) won the sprint for fifth place 45 seconds back, after unsuccessfully trying to chase the attack down.
Earlier, it took an hour of racing before a small group containing Taco van der Hoorn, Joshua Giddings, Fabio Christen, Rasmus Pedersen and Petr Kelemen finally escaped the peloton, while Lewis Askey, Mikkel Bjerg and Ceriel Desal later bridged their to the escapees, bringing the total to eight.
With only Bjerg and Pedersen still surviving up front, Powless, Joshua Tarling and Fabio van den Bossche eventually joined the two leaders, only to have Van Aert, Jorgenson and Benoot link up as well.
However, the lead group was reduced to just Van Aert et al and Powless after the climb of the Knokteberg.
From there, the quartet continued to remain outside the clutches of the peloton, clinging to an advantage of just under a minute.
With 3km to go, Benoot, Jorgenson and Van Aert continued to join forces against Powless, with Jorgenson later attacking during the final kilometer.
However, Powless proved unshakable, even after Jorgensen had peeled off the front and Van Aert opened up his sprint just before the line.
