Lotto-Soudal have confirmed that their rider Bjorg Lambrecht has died following a crash during today's opening stage of the Tour de Pologne.
The 22-year-old was taken to hospital following the crash, which happened with around with around 85 kilometres remaining of today's stage from Chorzow to Zabrze.
Lambrecht, who turned professional with Lotto-Soudal last year, was one of the best of a new generation of Belgian talent.
He was second overall behind Egan Bernal at the Tour de l’Avenir in 2017, and earlier that year won the under-23 edition of Liege-Bastogne-Liege.
Last year, he won a stage of the Tour des Fjords and finished the Norwegian race as runner-up on GC to Mitchelton-Scott’s Michael Albasini. He was also second in the Under-23 road race at the UCI Road Cycling World Championships in Salzburg.
This season, he achieved a string of impressive results in some of cycling’s biggest races, finishing sixth at Amstel Gold, fourth at Fleche Wallonne and 12th overall at the Criterium du Dauphine.
He had been targeting a high overall finish at the Tour de Pologne and was also aiming for GC at the Vuelta a Espana, a race where he made his Grand Tour debut last year.
The biggest tragedy possible that could happen to the family, friends and teammates of Bjorg has happened… Rest in peace Bjorg... pic.twitter.com/9u9LZkp2Rt
— Lotto Soudal (@Lotto_Soudal) August 5, 2019
Born in Scotland, Simon moved to London aged seven and now lives in the Oxfordshire Cotswolds with his miniature schnauzer, Elodie. He fell in love with cycling one Saturday morning in 1994 while living in Italy when Milan-San Remo went past his front door. A daily cycle commuter in London back before riding to work started to boom, he's been news editor at road.cc since 2009. Handily for work, he speaks French and Italian. He doesn't get to ride his Colnago as often as he'd like, and freely admits he's much more adept at cooking than fettling with bikes.