This Sunday 19th of May was D-day for Wanty-ReUz-Technord in the Triptyque Ardennais. The day after his stage victory, Wouter Toussaint managed to successfully defend his yellow leader’s jersey and to win the final classification ahead of his teammate Simone Gualdi. The young team thus achieved the double in her home region.
The day before, the two riders had completed an impressive 35 kilometer duo attack, crossing the finish line together almost 1’40 ahead of their competitors.
The Dutchman wearing the yellow jersey could rely on the support of his teammates to neutralise the multiple attempts of his opponents and managed to maintain his precious kit at the end of the third and final stage towards Polleur this Sunday.
With his stage victory and overall win, Toussaint delivered the second and third victory of the season for development team Wanty-ReUz-Technord.
Eddy De Bie
"Joining the structure of Intermarché-Wanty was exactly what I needed for my development. After a year of racing among the pros, I have a nice program with Wanty-ReUz-Technord, mainly composed of races in my age category, in which I can regularly ride finals and fight for the win. This is how my self confidence grew throughout the season. Physically, I also feel excellent during this period of hilly races, with the in Circuit des Ardennes or La Flèche Ardennaise last week for example, so I came to the start of this Triptyque Ardennais with ambition. "We started well in the opening stage and planned to attack from the first climb on the local circuit the next day. This is how Simone Gualdi and I bridged to the three leaders with Obie Vidts, who used his remaining power in support of us. The one-two result of Simone and myself crowned a perfect race by the whole team. And it is thanks to the efforts of all our teammates that we were able to secure first and second place in the classification in Polleur, as it was anything but an easy job. Within our team, we each get our chances in turn, which is why we always go through fire for each other. I hope I can keep this upward trend going for a while longer, as there are still several nice races to come."
