"There was some pressure from the team" - Amaury Capiot starts at Dwars Door Vlaanderen despite breaking collarbone less than two weeks ago

The 78th edition of Dwars Door Vlaanderen takes place this afternoon and despite breaking his collarbone just twelve days ago, Arkéa - B&B Hotels' Amaury Capiot will be present at the startline.

A brave decision from the Belgian, but also one he didn't entirely make himself. "There was some pressure from the team to start here. I don't really understand why," Capiot himself explains in conversation with Sporza prior to the day's racing getting underway. "I would have waited another week and put everything on Roubaix for maximum recovery. That seems the most logical to me, yes, but apparently not."

Riding any race with a broken collarbone has obvious problems, but riding a Flanders Classic packed with cobblestones? Perhaps not the wisest thing to do. "The pain itself was and is not too bad. Only the vibrations on the cobblestones will hurt today. The fracture hasn't moved, so it's not too bad," Capiot insists however, putting on a brave face. "It's not optimal, not anyway, although training still works reasonably well. There has been some pressure from the team."

"Now it's not like I'm just going to quit. Otherwise I would have trained better at home, just like yesterday. That would have been better for me. But if the team sees it this way, then I can only make the best of it for myself," he concludes. "We have been wringing words all year long about what is and what is not. We can't change much about it."