Where did Toms Skujins suddenly come from? "He focused entirely on this Opening Weekend"

Visma | Lease a Bike took home the highest honors on Saturday in Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, but other teams also showed strong collective performances: Lidl-Trek was active in making the race, and Lotto-Dstny did everything, in vain, to get sprinter Arnaud De Lie to the sprint. IDLProCycling.com caught up with both teams for insights.

Lidl-Trek was still without Mads Pedersen but with Toms Skujins, Alex Kirsch, Jonathan Milan, and Tim Declercq, they had four riders in the first group. Of that quartet, Skujins was the last remaining in the top six, even seeming to break away from the big names on the Berendries. Team director Gregory Rast said, "Toms had a very good race. He could afford to ride conservatively since Visma | Lease a Bike had many riders at the front. We noticed on the Valkenberg and Molenberg that he was very strong, so we told him to keep it conservative and move if he had something left. I wasn't surprised by his performance because he focused entirely on this Opening Weekend."

"It was really nice to see him even putting the best riders of the race briefly behind him, but it's a pity that Jonathan ultimately couldn't keep up," Rast noted afterward. "For Toms, it was unfortunate that he got caught again, because sprinting isn't really his thing." In the end, Jasper Stuyven was the best Lidl-Trek man in seventh place. "Jasper made a mistake by missing the beakaway group, but he was there when it mattered. He had a weaker moment on the Bosberg, but we gained a lot of confidence for other races. We hope that Jonathan will be better then and thus able to sprint. For Toms, it means we'll need him, even when Mads Pedersen joins. With them, 'the Tractor' Tim Declercq, Jasper, and especially Mads, we have a very good team," Rast concluded.

De Buyst: "Making do with what you have"

Lotto-Dstny, with Brent Van Moer, Victor Campenaerts, and Jasper De Buyst, did everything possible to set up De Lie for a sprint. "Arnaud and I were in that group of 23, then everything came to a head on the Wolvenberg. That's where those six broke away, and I just missed joining them. Jonathan Milan had to drop because he was on the limit, but the same was true for me, and I couldn't close the gap."

"The best riders pulled away there, but the race still took a quite unexpected turn," analyzed the seasoned De Buyst. "Everyone came back together, and we tried to get back, but ultimately, we just didn't manage to. It's a pity. We knew it was going to be tough to close it, but we just couldn't make it happen. When the best riders break away, you have to make do with what you have."