Hills in the closing stages could foil the sprinters
The Paris-Brussels race, one of the last big races of the Belgian season, presented a new course for its 90th edition, to be run on September 11th. The 2010 edition of the race will feature ten “hellingen” (hills) in 218.5km, with four of them coming inside the final 20km, giving more opportunities for breakaways to succeed in a race traditionally dominated by sprinters.
2009 winner Matt Goss (now HTC-Columbia, then Saxo Bank) is currently racing in the Vuelta a España and so will not be present at the race next month. Robbie “Mr Paris-Brussels” McEwen, who has won the race five times, will be there though, and was present at the race presentation in Brussels this afternoon.
“The new course is much more suited to the explosive riders,” the Australian, who lives in Belgium told Het Laatste Nieuws.
“I think the organisers have had enough of Australian sprint victories,” he joked, “although the fast men have a chance.”
While none of the hills compare to those climbed in the Flemish or Ardennes classics, they are enough to sap the legs of the pure sprinters. The final climb, the Stationsstraat, comes with less than a kilometre to go, while the finishing straight in Uccle has a slight incline to make things tougher for the fast riders.