Chaotic sprint of Heistse Pijl sees top British talent fulfil his promise with first pro win

The Heistse Pijl was won by Noah Hobbs. The British sprinter from EF Education-EasyPost was the strongest after a nervous finale in Belgium, ahead of Søren Wærenskjold (Uno-X Mobility) and Milan Fretin (Cofidis). It is the first professional victory for the 21-year-old Brit, who seems to be fulfilling the promise he showed after sensational results at youth level.

Alongside the Giro d’Italia Women, there was also racing in Belgium. The Heistse Pijl is a race that has been held since 1929, although after an absence of more than thirty years it was brought back to life in 2016. Dylan Groenewegen was the best then, which says enough about how the race is usually expected to unfold: a sprinter usually wins.

Still, the Heistseberg sometimes causes a bit of chaos. It was climbed six times on Saturday. At 700 metres at 2.4 per cent, it looks like nothing much on paper, but the cobbles still make it a tricky bump, especially because the final summit came about a kilometre from the finish. A recipe for a chaotic finale, of course.

It took a long, long time before a proper breakaway was established. The pace was high, and even caused a split in the peloton early on, but everything came back together again. Only in the final 100 kilometres did two men get away, namely Michiel Coppens (BEAT) and Louis Chaleil (Decathlon CMA CGM Development).

That duo built up an advantage of about two minutes. At that point we saw EF Education-EasyPost and Unibet Rose Rockets take up the running to control the gap. It was raining heavily by then, which made things even more nervous: the cobbles on the Heistseberg and the descent that followed were very wet.

Coppens dropped his French breakaway companion, but not for long. Uno-X Mobility also joined the chase, and so his lead came down quickly. With eight kilometres to go, his adventure was over. It was full gas to the foot of the Heistseberg. And that led to an ugly crash on an badly marked refuge island: riders from EF Education-EasyPost and Soudal Quick-Step went down.

The rest of the peloton was spared. On the Heistseberg, Anthony Turgis (TotalEnergies) attacked, but without much success. It came down to a sprint in Heist-op-den-Berg, where Unibet Rose Rockets did an excellent job. It was Noah Hobbs (EF Education-EasyPost), however, who had the last word, just ahead of Søren Wærenskjold (Uno-X Mobility).

A nice detail: Hobbs has a younger brother, who races for the development team of Visma | Lease a Bike. He won a stage in the Oberösterreich Rundfahrt on Friday. It clearly runs in the family.