Marc Wauters, the Lotto Soudal sports director, manages cycling activities at the Zolder motor racing circuit between Liège and Antwerp. Waters were the problem Wauters was the solution. “We started searching for alternatives but the problem is that in order to enact the road closures you need to give four months’ notice.

“On the Sunday night before Wednesday’s stage, the mayor of Verviers called and told me the race wouldn’t be possible,” Brandt says. The second stage of the 2021 Tour of Wallonia, scheduled for July 21, was designed as a mini Liège running between Verviers and Herve but on the eve of the race, both were up to their necks in flood recovery.

Torrents were surging through the ground floor of Le Cheval Blanc, the famous watering hole of the Philippe Gilbert fan club in Remouchamps, at the foot of Liège-Bastogne-Liège’s Côte de la Redoute. Two riders on the start list for Wallonie, Louis Vervaeke and Kenneth Vanbilsen, had begun the week bailing out water from their apartment buildings.

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