Should Van der Poel have played more games? “It’s not like I was doing huge turns”

It was Florian Vermeersch who opened the race on the Molenberg for team leader Pogačar. At that point, only a handful of favourites were left in contention. Van der Poel was still there, but he was isolated. Speaking afterwards in a flash interview, he admitted he had not expected the decisive move to come quite so early.

Still, it wasn’t an unpleasant situation for the former world champion. “It takes away some of the positioning for the second climb up the Oude Kwaremont, so for me it was actually a pretty good situation. Unfortunately, I was in a good position but got blocked a bit. I had to come all the way from the back, which took a lot of effort to get back to Tadej.”

It therefore took a moment before he was back on the wheel of Pogacar and Wout van Aert. It took a lot of energy—energy he might not have been able to regain. Was that ultimately where the problem lay? “It’s hard to say. Tadej was very strong today, though I wasn’t far off from keeping up with him on the Kwaremont. But he was super strong.”

After the penultimate passage of the Paterberg, Van der Poel and Pogačar were clear together. Remco Evenepoel came close to making it back, but the two leaders worked well enough to keep him at bay. That naturally raised the question of whether the Dutchman may have contributed too much. “It’s not like I was doing huge turns,” Van der Poel said. “Sometimes it’s actually better for your legs to spend a bit of time on the front. I was happy with the situation, and I always go all-in for myself, as hard as I can. I did that today as well, but it’s very simple: he was stronger.”

According to the Alpecin-Premier Tech rider, trying to play more tactical games would not have changed the final outcome anyway. “It wasn’t necessary either. He was happy that I did a bit of work, which allowed him to recover slightly. That meant he could still do the bigger share of the work on the front. He showed again just how strong he is.”