De Lie Catches The Breakaway 100 Metres From The Line To Win The Famenne Ardenne Classic For The Third Time And Take His First Victory Of 2026
Sunday afternoon Marche-en-Famenne. Arnaud De Lie has finally opened his 2026 account in the most De Lie way possible — powering past a doomed two-rider breakaway inside the closing 150 metres on a damp finish line in the Belgian Ardennes to win the Famenne Ardenne Classic for the third time in four years. The Lotto-Intermarché sprinter beat Jens Verbrugghe of NSN Development by a half-bike length, with Pinarello-Q36.5's Matteo Moschetti taking third on a course that had been thrown wide open by a relentless attack-and-counter pattern across the four closing laps of the Côte de Roy.
The catch itself was the kind of finish the 186.4km race has produced over and over again since its 2019 debut on the Ardennes calendar. A two-rider move had been clear of the chasing peloton for the closing 30 kilometres, with the front pair carrying a margin of 24 seconds onto the closing local circuit. Lotto-Intermarché ate into the gap on every passage of the Roy, drove the chase under the red kite at over 60 km/h, and reached the leaders inside the final 200 metres on the long, slightly uphill drag to the line.
De Lie hit the front with 100 metres to go, opened a half-bike-length gap and held it all the way to the line as the breakaway riders — clearly emptied by their long effort — were swallowed up. Verbrugghe came round late on the right-hand barriers to take second on what was the biggest result of the 22-year-old's career, while Moschetti rounded out the podium for Pinarello-Q36.5 in a sprint that was decided by no more than half a wheel between first and third.
For De Lie, the win is everything. After a stop-start spring in which he failed to convert form into results across Dwars door Vlaanderen, the Scheldeprijs and an Amstel Gold Race in which he finished a frustrated ninth, the Belgian rolled into Marche-en-Famenne under genuine pressure to deliver. He answered with the kind of confident, late-finish ride that defined his 2024 season — the year he last won this race — and now heads to the Giro d'Italia with the form indicator the team had been chasing all spring.
"I needed this," De Lie told Sporza at the line. "It has been a long six weeks. The team rode for me from the second lap of Roy onwards and the catch was perfect. I knew the breakaway was paying for it on the last passage of the climb, and I knew that if we got within 10 seconds with two kilometres to go we would have it. Three Famenne wins is something I don't take for granted." He becomes only the second rider in the race's short history to win it three times, after Bryan Coquard's 2019 and 2020 doubles.
The win is also a Lotto-Intermarché moment. With Maxim Van Gils sitting out the spring after his early-March knee surgery and the team without a 1.Pro or WorldTour win in 2026, sport director Kurt Van de Wouwer's brief on the morning of the race — "make this the day" — landed cleanly. The eight-rider Giro 2026 squad announced last week is now built explicitly around De Lie as the priced sprint card on Stage 3 Burgas, Stage 6 Naples, Stage 13 Cesenatico and the Stage 21 Roma close-out.
For Verbrugghe, second place is a career-altering result. The NSN Development rider, on a stagiaire ride at the WorldTour-affiliated team's continental feeder squad, has been promised a senior contract for 2027 on the basis of post-Spring-Classics form, and a podium finish at the Famenne Ardenne Classic immediately repositions him as the cleanest under-23 sprint card in the Belgian feeder system. Moschetti's third is Pinarello-Q36.5's first podium since the team's restructure under the Pinarello title sponsor in February.
Tibor Del Grosso of Alpecin-Deceuninck rolled in fourth from the same select group, with Sporza confirming he had been the strongest rider of the day on the Roy passages but suffered a chain drop with 800 metres to go that took him out of position on the closing drag. The result writes the last chapter of the 2026 Belgian Ardennes one-day campaign before the peloton splits towards the Giro startline in Nessebar and the build for the Critérium du Dauphiné in early June.