9th April – Scheldeprijs: Terneuzen – Schoten
The “unofficial sprinter’s world championship” a.k.a. Scheldeprijs took place on Wednesday afternoon, where Team Picnic PostNL lined-up with a squad built to set-up fast finisher Pavel Bittner for the finale. It was a steady start to the day before wind ripped into the peloton and the race split into several groups; however as they turned towards the local circuit it all regrouped. From there, the team was in control and moved Bittner up well. A crash at around ten kilometres to go saw the peloton split with Bittner and Julius van den Berg making the first part. Van den Berg did his best to then help Bittner for the finale, who showed a solid turn of speed to take ninth on the day in quite a chaotic sprint.
Bittner expressed: “Today we went into the race with a plan to place me well into the final so I could go for a sprint. In Scheldeprijs there is always a chance of wind and splits, but when that happened today most of the guys were in the first or second group so it was under control. When we went out of the wind everything came back together and then we focused on the final. Every lap the communication was on a good level and we knew what to do. I think with around 12 kilometres to go there was quite a big pile up, and Julius and I just got through it. We tried to do the best job together, and I found a wheel of one of the other sprinters to stay on. It was really fast, and in the end I had good legs, but I couldn’t make up too much ground. The guys did a good job but we just had a bit of bad luck with being held up by that crash. We can take some positives with us into the next races.”