Jenthe Biermans claims our 4th win of the season!
Jenthe Biermans gave the ARKEA-B&B HOTELS team, who were virtually playing in their own backyard in Vitré, their fourth win of the season.
Photos: LNC/B. Bade & A. Lipke
“The whole ARKEA-B&B HOTELS team has done an enormous amount of work on this Route Adélie de Vitré. I’d like to highlight what Ewen Costiou did for me. He came back to my group, after having been distanced, and then he set about closing the gap. I had a very, very long sprint, I was always well placed and I gave everything I had to get this victory. I’m feeling really good at the moment. I’d finished third three times and I was always on the verge of success, and today I’m winning on the home turf of the ARKEA-B&B HOTELS team, which is fantastic for the whole team and for me. Laurent Pichon knows this race very well, and he gave us the perfect instructions to win this event”.
“It wasn’t necessarily planned for me to be out in front, but I had to be a step ahead, especially with the wind on my side. I’m a racer who likes to race, not wait, it’s in my temperament. We had to be vigilant at the start, and I thought that other riders were going to join us, but in the end there were only two of us. But showing up at home, in front of our partners, is something that’s important for the ARKEA-B&B HOTELS team. Everyone pulled out all the stops today and did their utmost to help Jenthe Biermans achieve this great success.”
“We all wanted this success in the ARKEA-B&B HOTELS team, and after all, saying it is good, doing it is even better! What more emotions on arrival, at home! My words this morning at the briefing were: “I want to see a team here”. That’s what we saw throughout the race. We wanted to make the race difficult. Mathis found himself in front a bit by chance, but that made things easier for his team-mates behind him, because they didn’t have to drive. That was already a good point, because everyone was waiting for us. We tried a coup de force with forty-five kilometres to go. There were then five riders from the ARKEA-B&B HOTELS team in front. We had no choice. We had to make a break because some good riders had been trapped. Pierre Thierry and Clément Venturini did an incredible job so that the breakaway could get away. I had left Ewen Costiou and Jenthe Biermans in reserve. Ewen had carte blanche to try his luck. And he did. Unsuccessfully. He then put himself at Jenthe’s service in the final, sacrificing himself for him. We never gave up, even when the last shot went in, and in the end Jenthe pulled off the winning sprint.”