Victor Campenaerts, one of many cornerstones of Lotto-Dstny’s classics marketing campaign, shall be out for the following two months and miss all the remaining Spring Classics. The 31-year-old crashed closely within the Bredene Koksijde Traditional on Friday and fractured a vertebra in his lumbar backbone, his staff introduced.
Campenaerts was mid-pack with 53km to go, having drifted again after his staff tried to separate the race within the crosswinds. On a slender part of street with a deep crack working via the center of the tarmac a Intermarché-Circus-Wanty rider shifted to keep away from driving into the rut and ran into Hugo Hofstetter (Arkéa-Samsic). The contact brought about Hofstetter to fall and the crash rippled via the peloton.
When the mud cleared, Campenaerts was clearly the worst off, seen writing in ache on the bottom whereas the remainder of the crash victims received again up.
“I’m in fact very upset to overlook the Spring Classics with Lotto-Dstny,” Campenaerts mentioned. “Everybody noticed that we had began the season in a great way and I used to be actually wanting ahead to persevering with that good circulate within the upcoming classics.
“Sadly I’ll now should comply with it from residence. I’m satisfied that my teammates will present nice issues within the coming weeks, and from the couch, I shall be their greatest supporter.”
The crash was Campenaerts third in two days after he went down twice within the GP de Denain on Thursday. Hofstetter additionally crashed twice in yesterday’s race, and broke two units Bianchi handlebars within the course of. Bianchi vehemently denied any faults with their gear in a press release as we speak.
In 2022, Campenaerts raced a dozen Spring Classics from Omloop Het Nieuwsblad to Paris-Roubaix, with a fourth place in Dwars door Vlaanderen his finest end result.