Mathieu van der Poel’s Sanremo story — and the flying bike of Søren Kragh Andersen

Van der Poel eventually crossed the line in ninth place on the Via Roma. He logically stopped first to speak to his girlfriend Roxanne, and once she had heard the explanation behind the badly bleeding finger, it was time for Van der Poel to tell the Dutch-speaking press what had happened.

Although the incident was not clearly shown on television, Van der Poel turned out to have been one of the riders affected by the crash that also caught out Tadej Pogačar and Wout van Aert. “In that big crash I thought I had just managed to avoid it, but then another bike came in from the left and there was no way around it. I immediately felt that I had hurt my hand quite badly.”

“So at first I was just about not involved, but then a Lidl-Trek bike flew in my direction,” he said, referring to the machine of former team-mate Søren Kragh Andersen. According to Lidl-Trek sports director Gregory Rast, Kragh Andersen was also being checked by the team doctor after reaching the finish. “That’s when I ended up on the pavement as well. I fell a bit awkwardly, but apart from the hand, it’s not too bad.”

“The team did a very good job of bringing me back, and I was still able to hang on over the Cipressa, but I could already feel it wasn’t great anymore,” Van der Poel admitted, as honestly as ever. “I rode up at my own pace and saw Tadej, who had also been involved in that crash, come back past me. At the moment when it mattered, I was still there. But I didn’t feel super.”

“Tadej also came back from that crash, so he is the deserved winner,” Van der Poel said, making it clear he was not questioning the result on the Via Roma. “But I had already said on the radio that I couldn’t hold my handlebars properly. I still tried, but it just didn’t really work. I couldn’t accelerate the way I wanted anymore, even though I could still produce the watts.”

In the end, Van der Poel still managed to survive the Cipressa. “Before the Poggio I could already feel it, so that’s why I decided to ride that climb at my own pace.”

“The hope was that I might be able to come back again, like Filippo Ganna did last year, if they started looking at each other. But they didn’t, and so it didn’t happen,” said the Alpecin-Premier Tech leader, who was eventually reeled in and had to settle for ninth place.

So the sporting damage was still relatively limited, but what about the injured hand? “That one finger has gone through the nail, I think. That’s giving me quite a bit of pain, but all in all it could have been worse,” Van der Poel concluded.