Next race for Quick-Step Floors will be Halle-Ingooigem, on Tuesday afternoon.
The first (and, so far, only) neo-pro to win at World Tour level this season, Alvaro Hodeg sprinted for Quick-Step Floors at the end of the 194.9km-long Elftedenronde, a race in which our team was in the thick of the action for the very off, making sure it was part of all the important moves that tried to shape the outcome once a first group got clear, after 50 kilometers.
Despite the fact that the 22-man field was brought to heel, things didn't calm down and with 45 kilometers remaining, eleven riders attacked and established a promising gap over the bunch, who at first had troubles in organizing the chase. Quick-Step Floors was represented by Fabio Jakobsen and Pieter Serry, the latter putting some long stints at the front and emptying himself to give the group a shot at making it all the way to the finish line in Bruges.
The leaders approached the last ten kilometers with half a minute over the pack, which eventually had the upper hand and rejoined them with five kilometers to go. The bunch sprint that followed was a hectic affair, and it was Adam Blythe (Aqua Blue Sport) the one who prevailed, while Alvaro Hodeg finished just outside the podium, a result that left the young Colombian disappointed.
"The race was an action-packed one and the whole day our team did a good job by being present in all the breakaways, first in the big group with Davide, Fabio, Pieter and Saba, and later in the small seven-man breakaway with Fabio and Pieter. I felt good and wanted to get more out of the sprint, but we were caught too far back going into the last corner. We tried to move up, but everybody was sprinting and I got blocked. I am disappointed with the result, as I wanted to do more, but that's cycling", said 21-year-old Alvaro, who from here will travel to Italy for the inaugural edition of the Adriatica Ionica Race (20-24 June).
Photo credit: ©Sigfrid Eggers
