2015 Paris-Nice stage winner Michael Matthews has repeated his 2014 efforts atDe Brabantse Pijl, sprinting to second place in Belgium today.

Matthews won the sprint from a chase that fell agonisingly short of catching surviving breakaway rider Ben Hermans (BMC Racing) who won solo. BMC Racing teammate and last year’s winner ahead of Matthews, Philippe Gilbert, rounded out the podium.

ORICA-GreenEDGE worked hard throughout the day, shutting down an original break of three before Matthews was left to negotiate the final with the surviving peloton.

"I really had the legs to win," he told Sporza. "My team controlled the entire race until they disapperaed in the finale which was perhaps understandably.

"I hoped that other teams would chase Ben Hermans and David Tanner and then Hermans down but it did not work out. In the Amstel Gold Race, I would race in the same way again.

"BMC rode really well, they held back a little bit and made us do a lot of the work through the race so they still had a few guys left in the final to help Philippe and Ben to get away. We gambled a little bit with using a lot of our guys for the first few quarters of the race but that kept my legs really good for the finale. From then on it was up to me to shut down the moves and hopefully have a good sprint in the finale and unfortunately we were sprinting for second.

"It’s a good sign for the Ardennes. I wanted to do a good result here and I guess second is the second best result I could have gotten. I’m really happy with my form and I’m really happy with how I came out of Basque. I thought I was going to come out of it a little bit tired but I freshened up quite well and now I’m now looking forward to Sunday. I enjoy Amstel a lot more than the other two, Flèche is probably a bit harder and Liege is maybe even a little bit harder than that so for me, I like the Amstel Gold race the best.

"The goal is always to get a good result so we’ll give it a go. The strategy is always to win but you can’t put all your cards on winning, you have to do everything right through the race and then see how you feel in the final."

“We knew we had the favourite for the day,” sport director Laurenzo Lapage said. “So we had a meeting last night and decided to control the race.

“The team did a really good job of ensuring Michael didn’t have to work until the final. He had a really good last climb, he was only beaten by someone who started it in front of him.

“You see how much space he put on Gilbert. So thinking about Amstel on the weekend, today will give him more and more confidence and we believe in him.”

At the start of the day a number of combinations tried to shape the day’s racing, including a large group of 20 riders, but none were deemed acceptable to an alert peloton and racing stayed together.

Eventually Thomas DeGendt (Lotto Soudal), Alex Kirsch (Cult Energy Pro Cycling) and Anthony Delaplace (Bretagne – Seche Environnement) – escaped off the front to form the main move.

The trio worked to a maximum advantage of almost four minutes, but never looked threatening as ORICA-GreenEDGE and BMC Racing shared duties at the fore of the peloton.

As they crossed the finish line for the start of three 23.4km finishing laps, the margin was down to two-minutes 15seconds. Shortly after Kirsch was dropped and the gap began to tumble, all back together with 40km left to race.

BMC Racing sent Hermans up the road with David Tanner (IAM Cycling) and as the pair entered the final 15km of racing they held a 24second advantage to a group of ten and 38seconds to the peloton.

Tanner lost contact and attacks launched from the peloton as they closed the chase in pursuit of the leader, Hermans just holding off to claim the victory.