Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin Deceuninck) helped drive the pace in a break that launched with 88km to go on stage 1 of the Baloise Belgium Tour, spending much of the day on the attack, but even when the front group was caught at just over 2km to go the Dutch rider stayed up the front.
Van der Poel's work to set up the stage for sprinter Jasper Philipsen was not yet done. The rider slotted into his place in the Alpecin Deceuninck lead-out train and shepherding the sprinter until the last hundred metres of the race to finish off a day of work at the front that started before the stage was even halfway through.
