Van Aert had already tested his rivals on the Knokteberg, but it was on Berg Ten Houte that he, along with teammates Benoot and Jorgenson, truly went on the offensive. The entire team played a role in setting up the attack, with Tosh Van der Sande, Per Strand Hagenes, and Edoardo Affini doing the groundwork before Dylan van Baarle controlled the chase in the group behind.

In no time, Van Aert, Benoot, and Jorgenson bridged to the race leaders, where only Powless managed to latch onto the unleashed Visma | Lease a Bike trio. The four riders worked well together, steadily extending their lead over the peloton.

With the win clearly set to be decided among the front group, Jorgenson took the lead before Benoot launched the sprint for Van Aert. The Belgian, who crashed hard in last year’s edition, hit the front with 200 meters to go but was struck by cramps, leaving Team Visma | Lease a Bike empty-handed despite a dominant performance.

“I take full responsibility for this disappointment”, Van Aert admitted at the finish. “This is my fault. I told Tiesj, Matteo, and the sports directors that we should go for a sprint. I was confident we could beat Neilson that way, but now that we haven’t, I can only say we made a huge mistake. If you have three riders in a group of four and don’t win, you haven’t done everything perfectly. It was my call, so I take the responsibility.”

“I wanted Wout to win more than I wanted to win myself”, Benoot added. “I think we raced well, but in the end, it wasn’t perfect. In the final lap, all three of us wanted Wout to take the win, especially after what happened last year. We took a risk, and it didn’t pay off. Neilson deserves this victory—he was strong and played his part in the break. But of course, we should have put him under more pressure. That said, I think we finally showed again how we want to race. We’ve been searching for that feeling for a while, and today, it was back. We proved that we’re a strong collective across the board.”

Sports director Grischa Niermann also tried to find positives despite the frustrating outcome. “Of course, we can’t say it was a perfect plan if we didn’t win. For a long time, attacking from the break wasn’t an option because the peloton was still too close. At the end, we could have tried, but as a team, we decided to go for the sprint. We all believed in that choice. We rode a great race, and I genuinely enjoyed watching it. A win would have been nice, but the whole team put in a strong performance today. That gives us confidence for what’s to come in the next races”, the German concluded.