"I Did Not Think I Would Win A Race Like This Again" — Tim Wellens Wins Brabantse Pijl 2026 From A Three-Up Sprint In Overijse After Remco Evenepoel Forces The Race Open On The Final Schavei And Mathieu Van Der Poel Follows, With Tom Pidcock Dropped On The Penultimate Climb
17:08 Friday afternoon in Overijse. Tim Wellens comes off the wheel of Mathieu van der Poel with 180 metres to go, opens his sprint from the inside of the finishing straight, and rolls across the line a half-wheel ahead of Remco Evenepoel to win the 66th edition of De Brabantse Pijl. Van der Poel third, a bike length back. The 34-year-old Belgian raises both hands off the bars, looks up at the Overijse finish gantry, and mouths the word that has become a theme of his late-career renaissance: "comeback". It is Wellens's first one-day victory since the 2022 Tour of Luxembourg and his first Brabantse Pijl title after three previous podiums.
The race had been billed all week as Evenepoel's tune-up for Amstel Gold Race, Van der Poel's return to racing after the Arenberg pedal-cleat saga, and the defending champion Tom Pidcock's first chance to answer the questions about his knee-ligament rehabilitation. It ended up, improbably, as a coronation for the rider whom UAE Team Emirates-XRG had only confirmed on the Thursday afternoon startsheet after Felix Gall pulled out with illness. Wellens entered the race as a domestique. He leaves it as the winner of the gateway race to the three-Monument week.
The decisive move came on the penultimate ascent of the Schavei with 15.8 kilometres to go. Evenepoel, who had been racing on the front of a 14-rider lead group since the final lap of the Overijse finishing circuit opened, put in a standing effort at the foot of the climb that immediately shed Pidcock, Jhonatan Narváez and Benoit Cosnefroy. Van der Poel followed. Wellens, sitting fifth wheel, closed the gap over the top. By the final Hertstraat — 6.2 kilometres from the line — the front of the race was three riders: Evenepoel, Van der Poel, Wellens. Behind, a chase of four led by Pidcock came back to within 11 seconds but could not close the final gap.
"I did not think I would win a race like this again," Wellens told Sporza in the finishing pen. "Two years ago my contract was not renewed. Last winter, UAE took me in as a domestique. Today I was the last option on the team after Felix. You race the race you are in." UAE sports director Andrej Hauptman confirmed post-race that Wellens had been given "complete tactical freedom" after the winning break went clear. "Tim has always been one of the smartest riders in the peloton. With Tadej not starting, it was always going to be about opportunism. Tim took his."
For Evenepoel, second place was the answer to the question he had asked in Thursday's pre-race press conference: did the three-week Montseny altitude block work? "I attacked on the Schavei. I attacked with 100% of what I had. I finished second. That is my answer. The legs are good. Sunday I go to Amstel confident." The Belgian will start Amstel Gold Race at 48 hours' notice as co-favourite alongside Pogačar, who watched the Brabantse Pijl finale from the UAE team hotel in Valkenburg with performance coach Jeroen Swart.
Van der Poel's third place confirmed what his pedal-cleat-free Thursday recon ride on the Hagaard had suggested: the Dutchman is race-ready and psychologically unaffected by the Arenberg equipment fiasco. "I did what I said I would do on Wednesday. I raced today. I will race Sunday. I will race every Wednesday until Liège. The cleats are not the story anymore." Van der Poel confirmed he will ride a three-race Ardennes block for the first time since 2019: Amstel Gold Race, Flèche Wallonne and Liège-Bastogne-Liège.
Pidcock, the defending champion, finished fifth at 14 seconds — the first rider dropped from the winning move and the first to accept after the race that the performance was not what he had hoped for. "The knee is fine. The legs were not there on the Schavei when it mattered. I need to go home, look at the numbers, and think about Amstel." Q36.5 Pro Cycling Team confirmed Pidcock will start Amstel Gold Race on Sunday but that his Flèche Wallonne and Liège starts are now "subject to reassessment on Monday morning". It is the first serious question mark over the Briton's Ardennes campaign since the team announced its April programme in February.
The final Brabantse Pijl podium — Wellens, Evenepoel, Van der Poel — is the first in the race's 66-year history to contain three separate Grand Tour stage winners from three different nations. The 204-kilometre route covered in 4 hours 43 minutes at an average speed of 43.2 km/h, making it the second-fastest men's Brabantse Pijl on record. Crowd numbers on the Schavei and Hagaard climbs exceeded 58,000 — a one-day figure normally associated with Flèche Wallonne — confirming the race's re-emergence as the unofficial opening act of the Ardennes week.