Omloop het Nieuwsblad 2024

February 24, 2024 Racing shifts latitude from southern Europe, north, to Belgium for another opening weekend. An initial group of nine riders made the break but at 75KM to go, a split in the peloton let a group of twenty five get up the road to join the leaders. Visma-Lease a Bike had four riders in this group but Groupama-FDJ and EF-Education EasyPost had no representation and had to chase. The back of the race was starting to come together as dropped groups merged. The combination of the Holleweg then Wolvenberg split the front down to just seven, comprised of Wout van Aert, Christophe Laporte, Matteo Jorgenson all from Visma, Tom Pidcock of Ineos, Toms Skujiņš of Lidl-Trek, Arnaud De Lie of Lotto-Dstny and Gianni Moscon of Soudal Quickstep but he would be dropped shortly after. At the base of the Molenberg, the peloton caught the of the chasers, leaving just six up front. On the road to Geraardsbergen, Visma started playing tactical games which disrupted the lead. At 20KM to go, Jorgenson made a surprise move and got a quick gap with no reaction. The peloton were closing in on the five chasers at the bottom of the Muur van Geraardsbergen. There was a head wind from the Muur to the Bosberg and Jorgenson's lead was cut to just eight seconds at the base of the Bosberg. The race all came together at the top of the Bosberg and over the top, only fifteen riders were still in contention. Constant attacks went as no team had could organize. At a moment of pause, Jan Tratnik of Visma sent a flyer and Nils Politt of UAE was quick to react but no one else went with them. Shortly after, a larger group was able to make contact with the thirteen chasers, including a number of Lotto-Dstny riders. They formed a furious chase for Arnaud De Lie and got within twelve seconds with 2KM to ride but ran out of steam and would not close the gap. As the two up front came to last KM, Politt kept the pace reasonably quick, letting Tratnik sit on the wheel. Tratnik started his sprint first with almost no reaction from Politt. Tratnik took the win, Politt in second and Wout van Aert took the sprint for third, continuing Visma's domination of the race in last few years.