Benoît Cosnefroy leads UAE Team Emirates-XRG’s ambitions in Belgium

UAE Team Emirates-XRG is all set to compete on two fronts this week, with a pair of Belgian one-day races on the cards, alongside the Skoda Tour de Luxembourg.

Over in Belgium, the Emirati squad will be taking on the Grand Prix de Wallonie on Wednesday, 16 September, before the Flandrien 0.0 Classic on Saturday, 19 September. At both of the races, the in-form Benoît Cosnefroy will be ready to lead the squad’s ambitions, hot on the heels of his win at last week’s Coppa Sabatini.

The Frenchman followed up his first victory in Italy with another podium place in Sunday’s Trofeo Matteotti, underlining his credentials for the two races to come in Belgium.

Speaking shortly after his third-place finish on Sunday afternoon, Cosnefroy was quick to turn his attention to the Grand Prix de Wallonie and the newly-renamed Flandrien 0.0 Classic.

Cosnefroy: “In the end, Italy was a good week for the team and me. It added extra motivation for the upcoming challenges, which, of course, take us to Belgium.

“I am really happy to fight in Belgium for the next two races, in Wallonie and the Flandrien Classic. My shape is really nice, and I want to continue like this, with the good results, and try to win again.”

It will be the Grand Prix de Wallonie up first for Cosnefroy and co on Wednesday afternoon, with Sports Directors Fabio Baldato and Jan Polanc in charge from the team car. The race will be celebrating its 66th edition this year, and UAE Team Emirates-XRG will be keen to improve on its best finish of sixth from two years back.

That top-10 placing was taken by Tim Wellens, and the Belgian will be in attendance once more this time out. The recent Tour of Britain winner was crowned the Grand Prix de Wallonie champion back in 2017, and will come straight to Belgium from helping his teammate Isaac del Toro win Sunday’s Grand Prix de Montréal in Canada.

On the start line in Seraing (Val-Saint-Lambert), Cosnefroy and Wellens will be joined by teammates Sebastián Molano, António Morgado, Rui Oliveira, Florian Vermeersch and Matteo Vanden Wijngaert (Gen Z).

At almost 200km in length, the Grand Prix de Wallonie is arguably the tougher of the two challenges this week. Before the race draws to a close at the Citadelle de Namur, the peloton will be tasked with 2,686m of climbing on a course that looks ripe for the puncheurs.

The final drag to the finish stands at 4.2% for 3.1km, with the likes of Arnaud De Lie and Mathieu van der Poel on the list of recent winners. Extra difficulty is added by an undulating last 100km of racing, which includes climbs such as the Mur de Lustin (1.6km at 9.6%), the Côte de Gayolle (1.5km at 9.9%) and Tienne aux Pierres (3km at 4.9%).

Three days on from the Grand Prix de Wallonie, UAE Team Emirates-XRG will look for its second victory in the Flandrien 0.0 Classic. Formerly known as the SUPER 8 Classic, the Emirati squad won this race in 2024 through Filippo Baroncini.

The history of the race dates back to 1982, when it was known as the GP Impanis, but despite a fresh name for 2026, the race remains much the same as in previous years.

That means a little under 200km of racing on a route that links Brakel and Haacht in Belgium. Travelling from west to east, the parcours skirts a course that lies south of Brussels for the most part. Along the way, there are a few lumps and bumps, but nothing that will cause great alarm to the fast finishers.

In the Flandrien 0.0% Classic, there is nothing like the climbing that the Grand Prix de Wallonie boasts, but of course, how attritional the racing proves will ultimately be determined by the pace of the peloton.

Saturday’s race will typically offer a sizeable opportunity for the sprinters, and as such, UAE Team Emirates-XRG will look to support Sebastián Molano.

The Colombian sprinter will continue on from the Grand Prix de Wallonie, as will Cosnefroy, Morgado, Oliveira, Vermeersch, and Vanden Wijngaert, with Luca Giaimi stepping in for Tim Wellens as the only change in the lineup.

Meanwhile, the Skoda Tour de Luxembourg will get underway for UAE Team Emirates-XRG on Wednesday. There, the team will return to the race it won last season through Brandon McNulty, a win that proved a defining moment of the season.

With the overall title at the end of last year’s race, McNulty claimed UAE Team Emirates-XRG’s 86th win of the campaign, breaking the previous all-time record that had been set in 2009 by Team Columbia-HTC.

It was the third time the squad had won the Tour de Luxembourg in recent years, with UAE Team Emirates-XRG also yielding five stage victories since 2020. This time out, the team will return with grand ambitions once more.

Led by Sports Directors Fabrizio Guidi and Andrej Hauptman, the six-man squad will contain Igor Arrieta, Filippo Baroncini, Julius Johansen, Adrià Pericas, Nils Politt, and Moritz Mauss (Gen Z).

The toughest day of racing in this year’s Skoda Tour de Luxembourg is arguably stage 3, which packs over 3,100m of climbing into the 179.6km-long route. A series of short but punchy climbs inside the last 30km should provide ample terrain for attacking.

But with that said, there are certainly no easy road stages in this year’s Tour de Luxembourg, with four days of rolling roads bookmarking a 20.4km-long individual time trial. That test against the clock will come on stage 4 in Ettelbruck, before the race ends with stage 5 from Mersch to Luxembourg City.

Stage 1 should ot be overlooked, with the opening day coming to a close on a 700m ramp that averages over 7%. This will take the riders into the heart of Luxembourg City for a grandstand finish on Wednesday afternoon.

All in all, the five days of racing should certainly provide a worthy successor to McNulty, and UAE Team Emirates-XRG will hope to be well in the mix.