Danny van Poppel sighs upong seeing the Tour de France route: "We're a bit like circus monkeys, aren’t we?"

The Van Poppel–Meeus duo had just one real sprint opportunity in Switzerland, and they capitalized on it flawlessly in Neuhausen am Rheinfall. Van Poppel delivered a textbook lead-out, allowing the Belgian to finish the job with ease. “A lead-out straight from the manual,” Meeus said, who also went on to win the Copenhagen Sprint a few days later.

So why were they racing in Switzerland? “It’s good preparation for the Tour, if I go,” said Van Poppel, who trained in Spain with Meeus and joined Mathieu van der Poel for some sessions. “We worked on our climbing legs too. I’m feeling good, but racing in Switzerland is always tough. At the same time, it’s a great way to fine-tune the form.”

Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe’s plans for the Tour de France haven’t been revealed yet. After his stage win, Jordi Meeus still didn’t know whether he’d be allowed to compete in La Grande Boucle. “So I can’t say much about it either. Of course, my preference would be to sprint with Jordi, that’s my goal, and I haven’t been able to show that for several years now.”

Van Poppel also showed in the Tour of Hungary that he hasn’t forgotten how to sprint, taking two stage wins there. “It went really well, so I was a bit surprised. At the same time, it wasn’t WorldTour level there. And that really makes a difference: when you want to move up, it just works. The whole run-up to a sprint plays out very differently in the Tour or Paris–Nice.”

On the first day in Lille, Van Poppel will once again experience the chaos of the Tour de France, which will continue for about a week and a half across northern France. “No one enjoys it. We’re kind of like monkeys in a circus, right? It’s more exciting for the fans, so they keep putting those stages in,” he said of the chaotic routes through Hauts-de-France, Normandy, and Brittany.

At Red Bull–BORA–hansgrohe, it’s starting to feel hopeless: team leader Primoz Roglic has crashed out of both last year’s Tour and this year’s Giro in stages like these. “It’s very frustrating for us. First and foremost for Primoz, but also for everyone at the team who has been preparing so hard for a goal. It seemed like bad luck, but at this point, it’s just part of cycling.”

“As riders, we have little to no say and I think that’s a real shame in cycling,” says Danny van Poppel. The lead-out man was the first this year to receive two yellow cards, in the Tour Down Under and UAE Tour. “Afterwards, I sent a message to Adam Hansen (president of the CPA riders’ union, ed.), but I got zero response. And I was really disappointed about that.”

“He wants to make everything safer and better, but I wrote down a bunch of suggestions, and then I don’t get a single reply,” says the man with loads of experience in sprints. “I’ve got a few more years left in the sport, and I just think: whatever, let’s go for it, because as a rider, I don’t have much say anyway.”

What kind of advice did Van Poppel offer? “Look at how it’s done in other sports, and bring in people who actually understand sprinting. If you compare it to other sports, cycling really comes across as amateurish. But they don’t want to fully listen, and the UCI has so much power that we can’t really do anything. It’s pointless to keep wasting negative energy on it, so you just focus on your performance instead.”