A day after near-crash, Jasper Philipsen ends 109-day drought with stage 2 win in Belgium Tour

A day earlier, Merlier won the first stage in a chaotic sprint. Looking at the route of stage two, a sprint was also expected on Thursday. The riders were sent west from Beringen to Putte before finishing after five local laps.

On the flat roads, it took a long time for the early breakaway to get away, but eventually, six riders managed to break away from the peloton. Who were they? The Belgians Alex Colman (Flanders Baloise), Luca De Meester (Wagner Bazin WB), Maarten Verheyen (Baloise Glowi Lions), Kenay De Moyer (Pauwels Sauzen-Cibel Clementines) and the Dutchmen Marijn Maas (BEAT Cycling) and Casper van der Woude (Metec-Solarwatt). They gained a lead of about three minutes on the peloton, where Soudal Quick-Step did the work at the front.

In a very uneventful middle phase, Alpecin-Deceuninck, riding for Philipsen, joined the chase. However, the six riders at the front continued to work well together, so their lead only slowly decreased. With 65 kilometers to go, the gap was just over two minutes.

In the end, there was a very chaotic final phase, in which the peloton even split in two. Philipsen and Merlier were in the first peloton, along with Filippo Ganna (INEOS Grenadiers) and Thibau Nys (Lidl-Trek). Fast riders who missed the breakaway were Juan Sebastian Molano (UAE Emirates-XRG) and Ethan Vernon (Israel-Premier Tech), numbers two and three from the first stage.

With 43 kilometers to go, everyone came back together, ending a short but chaotic phase. It was game over for the breakaway riders, so we saw the first sprinter teams take control at the front of the peloton. However, three riders were still away: Wessel Mouris (Unibet Tietema Rockets), Axel van der Tuuk (Metec-Solarwatt), and Olivier Godfroid (Baloise Glowi Lions).

The three of them decided who would take the bonus seconds in the golden kilometers, while just a day earlier, we had seen the men with ambitions for the GC get involved in that battle. The trio was eventually caught six kilometers from the finish by a peloton led by Uno-X. This created gaps and eventually even halved the peloton four kilometers from the finish.

A late attack by Ådne Holter (Uno-X) failed 1.6 kilometers from the finish, after which we went into a ‘normal’ sprint. Molano seemed in the best position, while we also saw a crash. Philipsen was then well positioned by his lead-out, after which he sprinted to victory.