🎥 Relaxed Van der Poel turns “stunt pilot” when it really matters in Omloop Het Nieuwsblad

Van der Poel, the top favorite in the Omloop? “I think that's an exaggeration,” Roodhooft told Het Laatste Nieuws, not knowing that his leader would “simply” win hours later. “Mathieu has never ridden that race before and it's only his first road race of the season. Moreover, the end of February is early for him to start racing on the road. A month ago, he was still doing cyclocross.”

However, Van der Poel did not start for nothing. “Mathieu is fine. Otherwise, he wouldn't have started. Only when that was clear to us did we make the final decision. There's no point in starting if you're not ready. The pecking order within the team seems clear to me: Mathieu van der Poel is our team leader in the Omloop.”

Roodhooft shrugged his shoulders at the start when asked about winning the Omloop. 'The Omloop is not an easy race. It's tough, and previous editions have shown that it's not easy to break away in the final stretch. The Muur and the Bosberg are certainly not easy climbs, but everyone is so fixated on them that it's not easy to break away there either."

“After the Muur and the Bosberg, there is always a fairly long descent, where the wind will also be blowing in our favor this year,” said Roodhooft, who mentioned men such as Tim Wellens (UAE) and Dylan van Baarle (Soudal Quick Step) as possible allies in an attack further down the road. “I don't think anyone will succeed on their own. It will have to be a small group of strong men.”

No silly attacks from far away and certainly not solo, Roodhooft preached firmly. “Where are you going to ride to? Look at last year's edition. After the Molenberg, we had five riders in a leading group of twenty and we started riding hard, but before the Muur, everyone was back together again. Somehow, on this course, people always come back from the background.”

And so we saw Van der Poel riding relaxed in the first hours of the Omloop. At the presentation in 't Kuipke, he already had a big smile on his face, and when he met his former teammate Gianni Vermeersch (now Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe) at the back of the pack after the start, there was a nice conversation, with some physical playfulness.

We didn't see Van der Poel for a long time after that, but when the final began and UAE Emirates-XRG did the lead-out for Florian Vermeersch to the Molenberg, the Dutchman was there when it counted. Vermeersch took the lead and Rick Pluimers had an excellent position on behalf of Tudor. However, the Dutchman crashed and hit his head on the cobblestones.

Van der Poel was right behind Pluimers and a crash in front of him seemed inevitable. Miraculously, however, he steered around Pluimers' head and was able to ride up to Vermeersch in no time. Other riders were held up by the crash in front of them, with only Tim van Dijke (Red Bull) able to cross over. Van der Poel rode Vermeersch and Van Dijke off the Kapelmuur and went on to win on his debut.