Soudal Quick-Step Devo Team\u2019s rider led home a fantastic 1-2 for Belgium after a flawless race against the clock.<\/p>\n
Jonathan Vervenne is the new U23 European ITT Champion! The 22-year-old, who came to the start straight from Rwanda, where last week he competed in both the individual time trial and mixed relay TTT, produced a superb display in France and took the biggest victory of his career so far.<\/p>\n
The 24km race between Loriol-sur-Dr\u00f4me and \u00c9toile-sur-Rh\u00f4ne wasn\u2019t a pan-flat one, featuring some rolling roads and a 1.1km climb just before the finish. Vervenne, who earlier this season captured his second national title in the discipline, covered it in 30:27 thanks to a remarkable average speed of 47.26km\/h, despite some pretty heavy headwind. The Belgian took the win for two seconds ahead of countryman Matisse Van Kerckhove, while Ireland\u2019s Adam Rafferty rounded out the podium in Ard\u00e8che.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew that I was in good shape and that on a good day I could come close to victory, but I can\u2019t say I was expecting to become European Champion. As soon as I rolled down the ramp, I rode according to my pre-race pacing plan, but then, in the second part of the race, I increased the speed, as I felt better and better. Maybe that was what made the difference in the end on this course which I liked a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt feels amazing to bring to a conclusion my time in the U23 with such a big success. It\u2019s something that makes me very proud and motivates me for next year, when I can\u2019t wait to race in the World Tour\u201d, said Jonathan, who in 2026 will turn pro with Soudal Quick-Step.<\/p>\n
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Photo credit:\u00a0\u00a9Billy Ceusters \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Soudal Quick-Step Devo Team\u2019s rider led home a fantastic 1-2 for Belgium after a flawless race against the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":174153,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,63361,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-174152","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-cycling","9":"tag-soudal-quick-step-pro-cycling-team","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom","13":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174152\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/174153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}