Joint podium finish in Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne salvages Tudor’s Opening Weekend – ‘When you’re the only guy on the team bus that didn’t need a doctor, that’s super tough’

“We got a little bit of revenge,” was how veteran Italian allrounder Matteo Trentin summed up Tudor Pro Cycling’s Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne after he and Luca Mozzato rounded out the podium behind Matthew Brennan (Visma-Lease a Bike) on Sunday.

Given what the team had been through 24 hours earlier in Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, you’d be hard pushed to disagree with that observation.

The sight of Tudor’s Rick Pluimers coming within a whisker of being ridden over by winner Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Premier Tech) after falling hard at the foot of the Molenberg – only a very nifty manoeuvre by the eventual winner avoided that from happening – was one of the defining images of the 2026 Omloop Het Nieuwsblad.

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After taking a third place behind Brennan in the mass dash for the line that decided Kuurne, Trentin pointed out that Tudor had suffered far more than that.

Stefan Küng was the worst affected, fracturing his femur and with the entire Classics campaign over when it had actually begun. Trentin recounted that when he arrived at the team bus post-race, he found he was the only rider who had come through Omloop completely unscathed.

“When you’re the only guy on the team bus that didn’t need a doctor, that’s super tough,” Trentin recounted.

“I was the only one not on the ground. If you add on top that Stefan [Küng] is out for the Classics, that Rick [Pluimers] got a really bad crash on the cobbles, that Marco [Haller] and Luca also crashed, and Alvaras [Muitas] also crashed badly, nothing broken but not good, then in the end, only five of us could start on Sunday.

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“Today at least we got a little bit of revenge, let’s put it this way, we raced because it was the only thing to do.”

Kuurne itself constantly looked like it would break apart in the final two hours, with constant attacks going on the hill section and yet more splits on the flat. Trentin explained that the overall momentum was only going in one direction, towards a mass sprint, albeit without some of the top-level fast men such as fellow Italian Jonathan Milan (Lidl-Trek) and Arnaud De Lie (Lotto-Intermarché).

“It became a really hard sprint to do or even to understand if it was going to happen, but it looked like nobody really committed in the small groups,” he said.

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“There was always somebody not happy, so they didn’t ride, and in the back in the peloton, Decathlon were always closing up the gap.”

As a sprint became more and more inevitable, it was time for the two to work out the best strategy for the dash to the line, Trentin said.

The sprint finish of Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne 2026 (Image credit: Getty Images)

“Then we spoke with Luca [Mozzato], and we realised that we were both tired, so we both just decided to work for each other, we made space for each other. Then with four kilometres to go, when there was a crosswind, we decided that each of us could go our own way and then we’d see what could happen. One of the two of us would up there in the sprint, for sure – and in the end, it was both of us.”

“Could we have done a lead-out?” he wondered out loud. “Maybe, but I think Matthew won easily, so that’s bike racing.”

The other question hanging over the Tudor participation in the race was whether it would have been possible for a different line-up to take part in Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne and give the injured and battered riders from Omloop a chance to rest up. But Trentin said that with Tudor racing across the whole of Europe, there was never really an option. In any case, the team ended up with the best kind of conclusion possible under very difficult circumstances.

“You have guys racing everywhere, we have a big program at the end of the day, you can’t just call somebody up on Saturday evening and ask them to come to the race. I think we’ve come out very nicely for the team, for our morale and for the rest of the Classics campaign.”

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