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Arnaud De Lie had hoped to walk away from Le Samyn on Tuesday with his first win of the season, but instead it was with a DNF and grazes as the Lotto-Dstny rider crashed on his way back to the peloton after a bike change.
The 21-year-old was visibly fuming after the incident, which can be seen in the footage on Eurosport, with the rider and his Lotto-Dstny team saying that there was a clear reason for the fall that ended his race as he was working his way back through the cars, and De Lie was not the one at fault.
“He was just sitting among the cars and coming back. But then suddenly there is a car from the organization that stops in a bend. All cars must then stop behind it,” Dirk Demol said in a report on WielerFlits, after having been interviewed by various media after the race
“It is clear that those cars are at fault. You don’t stop in a bend, that’s quite simple.”
De Lie slid out on the corner and across the road and then onto the footpath, after wavering slightly as he passed the cars before going down, leaving the rider – who was also gloveless by that point of the race – with a ripped kit and grazes visible on his right side.
“Okay, I arrived quickly. But if the car keeps the same speed as me, I can approach the corner better and I won’t fall,” said De Lie in a report on Het Nieuwsblad. “It’s not me who makes the mistake, it’s the car. I don’t know why he’s braking. But because of him I may now have one less victory. So thank you.”
After the crash, which occurred at around 30km to go, De Lie rode back to his team bus. While he was much calmer while speaking to the media, he was initially fired up by the incident which meant the rider, who finished tenth with a strong showing at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, was unable to chase the opportunity to grasp his first win of the season.
“It’s normal that I was angry, when you know you have the legs to win a match. If you look at the sprint, I had a good chance of winning,”De Lie said in the Het Nieuwsblad report. “It’s frustrating because I’m riding the perfect race. I sat where I was supposed to sit all the time. If you fall because of a car that does something it shouldn’t do… At that moment I couldn’t keep calm. That’s normal, I’m a winner.”
In the end, Le Samyn came down to a reduced bunch sprint with Laurenz Rex (Intermarché-Wanty) snatching the victory in a photo-finish with Antonio Morgado (UAE Team Emirates). De Lie will now turn his attention to his next opportunity, Paris-Nice, with the WorldTour stage race running from March 3-10.
