Mathieu van der Poel on an underwhelming Tour de Suisse (so far): 'I’d already given up hope'

Mathieu van der Poel made his mark on Friday in the Tour de Suisse with a fifth-place finish in the third stage. The Dutch rider didn’t have an easy start in the heat of the Alpine country, but feels things are starting to come together. He spoke with the AD about it after the third stage, which was won by UAE Emirates-XRG rider Jhonatan Narváez.

Behind Narváez and fellow breakaway rider Xandro Meurisse (Pinarello-Q36.5), a sprint broke out for third place. Magnus Cort (Uno-X) won that sprint, ahead of Marijn van den Berg (EF Education-EasyPost) and, consequently, Van der Poel. “I was a bit boxed in during the sprint, so I couldn’t get out of it properly. It wouldn’t have made a difference in terms of the win.”

"In the end, we still came close. I’d already given up hope a bit with 20 kilometers to go," said Van der Poel, who wasn’t given a free pass to join the breakaway. "They reacted pretty aggressively when I went. So I decided pretty quickly to save my energy and go for the sprint. It’s a shame we fell just short."

"Today I definitely felt a lot better than I did during the first few days. It was also less hot. That made me feel much better right away," the Dutch rider told the AD after the stage. "I'm pretty happy with how today went. I was able to keep up without any trouble on the climbs at the start of the stage."

Van der Poel agreed that things hadn’t gone great in the first few days. “It didn’t go as well as I’d hoped. We’ve also just come off a tough training camp, where we worked hard with the team. Everything went well there, but maybe I was feeling the effects of that. Sometimes I just need to be a little patient.”