Search our site:

Sign up for our Email Newsletter

2024 Classic Loire-Atlantique (1.1), France

24th edition: Saturday, March 16, 2024
Complete results

Classic Loire-Atlantique historic results | 2023 edition | Course map | Start list

11 x 16.6 km circuits totaling 182.8 km, starting and ending at La Haye-Fouassière

Paul Lapeira takes a solo win in La Haye-Fouassière

Les Woodland's book The Olympics' 50 Craziest Stories: A Five Ring Circus is available in print, Kindle eBook & audiobook versions. To get your copy, just click on the Amazon link on the right.

Weather at the start/finish city of La Haye-Fouassière at 1:10 PM, local time: 16C (61F), cloudy, with the wind from the southwest at 14 km/hr (9 mph). There is a 5% chance of rain. It was raining at the start.

The race: Martin Tjotta (Arkéa-B&B Hotels) did not start.

Here's the race report from second-place Tom Van Asbroeck's Israel-Premier Tech Academy:

Tom Van Asbroeck and Pier-André Côté continued their strong starts to the season as they finished second and fourth respectively at Classic Loire Atlantique for the IPT Academy on Saturday.

The podium, from left: Tom Van Asbroeck (2nd), Paul Lapeira (1st), & Emmanuel Morin (3rd).

This was Van Asbroeck’s second top-10 finish of the week, following on from sixth in Wednesday’s Danilith Nokere Koerse, while this was Côté’s best result since joining the IPT Academy squad at the start of 2024.

Having two riders place so highly was made even more impressive because the team started a rider down after Kiaan Watts was drafted into the Pro team for Friday’s Bredene Koksijde Classic in Belgium. He’ll rejoin the squad for the second part of the weekend double-header in France, the Cholet Agglo Tour.

The IPT Academy rode brilliantly to keep the day’s six-man breakaway in check throughout as the race took in 11 laps of a circuit in La Haie-Fouassiere, a few kilometers southeast of Nantes.

However, the race dynamic changed when 12 riders jumped clear from the peloton with a little over 50 kilometers to go. One of these – Paul Lapeira (DAT) – then broke clear from this group with 20 kilometers remaining and held on to win by 19 seconds.

“A small group had been let go, which we were happy with, but the WorldTour teams pulled it back too quickly,” said IPT Academy Manager Tim Elverson. “We knew chaos may happen with it caught with 50 kilometers to go but we made the mistake of being out of position when this happened.

“Missing a break in which all of the WorldTour teams were represented meant we couldn’t wait for someone else to ride, so we got on with it and the guys made a massive effort. We held Pier-André and Tom back for the finish, unfortunately, the winner had clipped off, but Pier led Tom out to take the bunch sprint for second. Overall, a very impressive team job today.”

Complete Results:

182.8 kilometers raced at an average speed of 42.769 km/hr

Course map:

The 16.6 km circuit. The riders will do this loop 11 times.

Road map of the loop

Start list with back numbers, March 15, 2024: