The Driedaagse De Panne-Koksijde in World Tour ? Race organizers wants to move up from Hors-Catégorie to World Tour status on the Union Cycliste Internationale racing calendar. Johan van Hecke explained his choice according to Belga. “Isn’t a cycling country like Belgium not entitled to a stage race in this category.”

And according to him, it is not impossible. “We again received a very positive report from the UCI after our last edition. We want to grow with our competition.”

But that's not all! The Belgian federation president suggested also that the Scheldeprijs has to be upgraded. “He should defend our case too. We had brilliant winners in recent years. The last in the series was Alexander Kristoff.”