Kasper Asgreen, Remco Evenepoel and Alvaro Hodeg will all be in action for the Wolfpack next week.
The 17th edition of the Benelux Tour will follow what has become a familiar pattern: a first part featuring several flat days and a short individual time trial, which will establish an initial pecking order, before the hard final three stages. There, more than 30 short but sharp climbs – including the Côte de Saint-Roch and Muur van Geraardsbergen – will add plenty of spice to the fight between the GC contenders, who’ll have to pay extra attention also to the bonifications put in play each day in the Golden Kilometer.
Remco Evenepoel will make his debut at the Benelux Tour, just four days after his most impressive display of the season, at Druivenkoers Overijse, where he rode away from the bunch with 60 kilometers to go and claimed his 20th victory since turning pro. Ronde van Vlaanderen and E3 Harelbeke winner Kasper Asgreen, who was fourth in Thursday’s race, is another Deceuninck – Quick-Step rider who is set to make his first outing at the week-long stage race which our team has won on two occasions.
Our squad for the World Tour event scheduled between 30 August and 5 September will also include Dries Devenyns, Alvaro Hodeg – a stage winner in Venray, at the 2019 edition – Iljo Keisse, Madison Olympic Champion Michael Mørkøv and Stijn Steels.
Deceuninck – Quick-Step sports director Tom Steels previewed next week’s race: “The Benelux Tour won’t be the easiest stage race of the year, as each stage will have something special. We’ll have some winds which could play a big role, we’ll have a short time trial, some opportunities for the sprinters, tricky cobbles and the final two stages where the riders will face many tough climbs. Kasper and Remco are our men for the general classification, while in the sprints Michael will guide Alvaro. Of course, in Dries, Iljo and Stijn we’ll have a lot of horsepower on board to control things, but as I said, we are not expecting an easy race at all.”
