Tom Boonen and Greg Van Avermaet will headline the Belgian team in the World Championships road race, with the selectors announcing the full line-ups for the men’s and women’s events, which take place in Qatar next month.
Boonen has a rich history of one-day success to his name and proved he still possesses a fast finish with recent triumphs at RideLondon and the Brussels Cycling Classic, where he got the better of French leaders Arnaud Demare and Nacer Bouhanni. He recently crashed out of the Eneco Tour but doesn't appear to have been left with any serious injuries.
Olympic champion Van Avermaet, meanwhile, has earmarked a ‘free role’ for himself, aiming to take advantage of any opportunities that may present themselves rather than committing squarely to the Boonen cause.
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The duo will be flanked by a team of strong Classics riders, including Eneco Tour runner-up Oliver Naesen, Vuelta a Espana stage winner Jens Keukeliere, and Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne champion Jasper Styuven. Completing the line-up are the Etixx-QuickStep duo of Iljo Keisse and Nikolas Maes, and the Lotto Soudal duo of Jens Debuscherre and Jurgen Roelandts.
While Keisse is likely to be saved for the fast and sinuous laps of the Doha Corniche, where the race will culminate, Boonen could well look to use the others to make the race as exacting as possible in the desert in a bid to sap the legs of the pure power sprinters.
Belgium’s last world champion, Philippe Gilbert, had long since ruled himself out of an appearance, saying the flat 257km Doha course was ill-suited to his characteristics, and there is a string of other notable absentees. Sep Vanmarcke misses out after illness forced him to skip the Eneco Tour, while there’s no space for Gianni Meersman, despite his two sprint stage wins at the Vuelta a España.
— Belgian Cycling Team (@BELCyclingTeam) September 26, 2016
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