CHAOS THEORY

The Belgium Tour was an unpredictable and exciting free-for- all

The Baloise Belgium Tour saw five different stage winners, five race leaders and a daily upending of the GC which finally settled with an overall win for Jens Keukeleire, riding for the Belgian national selection.

Perhaps we shouldn’t find it so surprising that a race of such variety and unpredictability took place in a country which has been cobbled together from two language groups and once took 589 days to form a government. Just as soon as one stage imposed order on the race, the next day shook everything up again. Bryan Coquard took stage one and Mathieu van der Poel won from a small break the next day, though it was Philippe Gilbert who took over the lead. Matthias Brändle won the midrace TT, with Wout van Aert first on GC. Maurits Lammertink won stage four, leaving Quick-Step’s Rémi Cavagna in the lead. But Keukeleire took advantage of the ‘golden kilometre’, where three bonus sprints in the space of a kilometre offered time bonuses, on the final stage and took enough to squeeze past and win by six seconds. For Keukeleire, who usually represents Orica, his GC win was confirmation of his strong Classics season. Quick-Step were less successful – finishing second, fourth and fifth overall showed they had strength in depth, but in a race as unpredictable as this, a strong team wasn’t enough.