Bjorg Lambrecht ready for New Challenges with the Pros

Bjorg Lambrecht ready for New Challenges with the Pros

Lotto-Soudal Team (Belgium) – "Bjorg Lambrecht will make his debut in Lotto Soudal’s elite team next season. The twenty-year-old has spent two successful seasons with Lotto Soudal U23 and is now ready for new challenges. In the past couple of years, Lambrecht has asserted himself as one of the most promising climbers for the future, and the winner of Liège-Bastogne-Liège U23 2017 has been able to claim some impressive results with the juniors", shared Lotto-Soudal Team. In 2016 he won the first stage of the Ronde de l’Isard and kept the leader’s jersey until the end. This year he finished second in several prestigious U23 stage races, such as the Tour de l’Avenir, the Giro Valle d’Aoste and the Tour de Savoie Mont-Blanc. The Belgian rider took part in the GP de Wallonie with the national team in September and crossed the line in ninth place. With this first good result in the elite category, Bjorg Lambrecht can certainly look forward to the future.

Bjorg Lambrecht:
“This is a dream coming true! At the beginning of this year, I had never thought that I could make the transition to the pro peloton in January 2018. Last winter I was out for eight weeks with a broken foot and I was only able to do some stabilization exercises to get ready for the new season. I thought my level of fitness would be far too low in the first races. I was supposed to come back to racing after Liège-Bastogne-Liège, but I could somehow start a bit earlier than expected. In Liège-Bastogne-Liège, I had a great day and I won the race. I went on and had a super great season. My performances in the Tour de l’Avenir in August led to the decision to make the transition to the professional peloton at the beginning of 2018. Many talented U23 riders have signed a pro contract for January 2018, and I would have had a lot of pressure on my shoulders. With the pros, I can start from scratch.“

“It’s a step into the unknown, and I expect the first few months to be really hard. It will mainly be about learning as much as I can. I am very happy to stay in a safe, trusted environment after riding for the U23 team of Lotto Soudal for the past two seasons. With the U23 team I had a very nice race programme, and I got the chance to compete in all the main races which involved a lot of climbing. That was the best journey I could take in the U23 category. »

“With the WorldTour team, I would like to help our leaders in the finales of smaller stage races next year. I will ride alongside Tiesj Benoot and Tim Wellens, and Harm Vanhoucke will probably be joining us halfway through the season. It will be nice to work with them. Of course, I hope that I can deliver good results in the future, both in stage races and in the Ardennes classics. Time trialling is becoming one of my priorities, as I really need to get better at it if I want to claim good results in stage races.”

Marc Sergeant, sports manager Lotto Soudal:
“Bjorg has had two fantastic seasons. He impressed a lot in 2016, his first season in the U23 category, and he carried it on through 2017. Despite his broken foot in winter, he performed well immediately, with a victory in Liège-Bastogne-Liège. Therefore, a switch to the pros seemed to be a logical choice. He seems to be very down-to-earth, he isn’t too bothered by the stress and the pressure, but now begins a new story. He has always been progressing so far, but there’s a lot of learning to be done for a young climber in his first years with the pros. I often hear about ‘the new Boonen’ or ‘the next Belgian Grand Tour rider’ when it comes to promising young talents, but I hope that he does not get that sort of expectation from the media and the outside world. The team will let him all the time he needs to grow and to mature, and even if he shows some flashes of talent, the process will always involve falling and getting up, good and difficult moments.”

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