Brugge - De Panne Classic

The Minerva Classic Brugge – De Panne opens the men’s Movistar Team’s two-week road towards the Ronde van Vlaanderen on Sunday 3rd April. Marketed as the ‘Worlds for sprinters’, the 207km coastal course, in the westernmost area of the Flemish region, will certainly be made harder by the influence of the wind.

The place where it blows the hardest, or where it should affect the riders most, is the area called De Moeren, a long, narrow straight the riders will be tackling three times into a long circuit that makes for most of the course (45km per lap). It’s otherwise a completely flat event (just over 200m elevation gain), with no cobbles either.