All the praise goes to Pogacar, but what Wout van Aert did in Milan-Sanremo was extraordinary too

Van Aert had come to Milan-Sanremo with ambition and stayed out of trouble all day, until none other than the world champion hit the deck right in front of him. Pogacar slid across the road, but somehow managed to get back up and continue quickly. Van Aert went over the Slovenian and was far less fortunate.

While UAE Emirates-XRG were already dragging Pogacar back toward the peloton at high speed, Van Aert had to change bikes after the crash. That meant he only got moving again much later than Pogacar, together with his teammates. The yellow-and-black train eventually rejoined in the coming-together of several groups on the Cipressa.

Van Aert must have passed a huge number of riders on his way back toward the front. Because of that, the Belgian never really knew exactly where he was in the race. “To be honest, I never really thought about ‘what if’. In the whole final I felt like I was chasing the race, and only in the last three kilometres did I realise we were still riding for the podium.”

Once the heavily reduced peloton had come back together after the Poggio, Van Aert decided to attack. “I was unlucky because after the crash I didn’t get a new bike immediately. The guys then rode for me and around me, so I had to go for the best possible result. It’s nice to still finish on the podium in that case.”

“So it feels more like a performance — we really got the maximum out of it,” concluded Van Aert, who did not see third place after such an extraordinary comeback as a victory. “It doesn’t feel like a win when you finish third,” the Belgian said with a smile in his post-race interview with Eurosport.

Still, the podium finish clearly does something for his confidence, after Van Aert had already taken encouragement from Tirreno-Adriatico. “My confidence was already good when I came here. I can take a lot of positives from this, and it’s nice that my next races are coming up quickly.”

He finished by praising Pogacar as well. “It’s special to stand next to him. I saw him next to me on the ground, and then I saw him next to me again on the podium, so I have no idea what he did in between. It must have been impressive, what he showed.”