Ronde van Brugge Men
A wet and windy edition of Ronde van Brugge awaited the Men’s program on Wednesday afternoon where Team Picnic PostNL set out with the plan to protect Pavel Bittner for a potential sprint finish but to also ride actively to make sure not to miss any splits cause by echelons. Doing just that, the team were attentive from the start and made sure Bittner was on the right side of any splits throughout the afternoon. Coming into the last 25 kilometres the team still had five riders in the reduced peloton of around 60, making sure that Bittner didn’t have to close to many gaps. Enter the final five kilometres the group had reduced further and Bittner surfed the wheels, shoulder a few elbows and positioned himself for the sprint to the line. Unfortunately, he got boxed in a bit on the left side of the road and couldn’t get out to fully open up his sprint, but still finished in a very respectable sixth place.
Bittner reflected: “Today was a special race with a lot of wind. Everyone from the team was really eager to race today and I was always well positioned in the echelons, and I was super happy with the support in the first part of the race. Julius also was riding really well and around halfway into the race the peloton split and we were both in the front. Things came back together and we worked towards the final with more of us. I felt really good but in the last five kilometres I was by myself so had to gamble a bit in the sprint and position myself there, and in the end I maybe chose wrong. It’s a bit disappointing as the legs felt really good, but we can take that as a positive into the next race in Gent.”
