Resurgence of Arnaud De Lie continues! Belgian takes dramatic sprint win at Bretagne Classic 2025

The recent resurgence of Arnaud De Lie continues to go from strength to strength. At the 2025 Bretagne Classic the Belgian star of Lotto has taken victory from the sprint in a dramatic finale.

A high-quality quintet formed the breakaway of the day as Lewis Askey (Groupama - FDJ), and Silvan Dillier (Alpecin-Deceuninck) were joined by the Spanish trio of Oscar Rodriguez (INEOS Grenadiers), Iker Mintegi (Euskaltel - Euskadi) and Andoni López de Abetxuko (Euskaltel - Euskadi). The latter was the first to be dropped from the group, but by 94km to go, the who group had already been swallowed up by a rampant peloton. 

As a string of attacks then followed from the front of peloton, most were pretty quickly nullified. It wasn't until a move by Kasper Asgreen at around 75km to go that anyone got some real separation. A short while later, with 65km to go, the Dane had already stretched his lead over the peloton to more than a minute and a half. By 50km to go, Asgreen's advantage had been cut slightly, but it was still over a minute. With 35km to go, Asgreen was caught.

The race then exploded again in the final 30km and by 20km from the line, an elite 8-man group had broken free including Brandon McNulty, Aleksandr Vlasov, Simone Velasco, Quinten Hermans, Krists Neilands, Mauro Schmid, Ewen Costiou and Alexandre Delettre. Soon later though, things were all back together once again.

Into the final 5km, McNulty was back out front, this time joined by Maxim van Gils, Valentin Madouas and Louis Barre around 20 seconds of the chase. That quartet looked set to battle for the victory, but as they passed through the Flamme Rouge, they were caught by the chase. In a frantic finale it was then Arnaud De Lie who won from the sprint, taking victory ahead of Emilien Jeannière and Olav Kooij.