Tim Wellens defends Brabantse Pijl sprint "wasn't a conscious move"

Cycling
Thursday, 14 April 2022 at 17:00
1049562866
Yesterday's Brabantse Pijl was a complicated race which saw Lotto Soudal on the head of affairs with Tim Wellens and Victor Campenaerts attacking the race. Wellens ended up finishing third on the race, but relegated to ninth after an irregular sprint that saw Remco Evenepoel very frustrated at the end of the race.
"I'm happy with my race. We knew it was going to be an offensive race with the parcours and with the cobbles. So I think in the second lap we succeed to ride away with seven or eight guys and then we come to the finish for the second place," Wellens said in a post-race interview. "I knew that in the final, Ineos was the team to beat. [It's] one thing is to be with three in the final, but you also need to have the legs to stay in front. Congrats to the winner. He was one of the strongest riders in the group."
After making it into the decisive move with over 50 kilometers to go Wellens was an active figure, attacking several times but also closing moves. With the lack of organization in the final kilometers, INEOS Grenadiers took advantage of their numerical superiority to head onto the race win with Magnus Sheffield.
Wellens was in the fight for the second place in the sprint, however things didn't go his way: "In the sprint we were riding not too fast. I started my sprint, I went to the left, and apparently it was a little bit too brisk to the left so a bit of a pity. It wasn't a conscious move. It's never nice but I'll remember my strong race of today."
In the head of the group, as soon as Benoît Cosnefroy launched his sprint Wellens slowly moved towards the left side of the road. As a result, Remco Evenepoel was almost pushed onto the barriers and gestured his way into the finish line with frustration for having lost his opportunity of fighting for the podium.
Wellens ended up relegated into last place in the group, which translated into a ninth spot: "For me, it was still within the limit, but I haven't seen the images. It's also a different sprint when you start from 20kph instead of 60. So of course, if you ride a full sprint at 60kph you don't do a move like this. I think if you start at slow speeds, it's in the limit," he concluded.

Just in

Popular news