Van der Poel darted into Scottish mansion "in dire need" during protest: "Thank you to those people"

Like the rest of the peloton, Van der Poel had to walk after about eighty kilometers, when several protesters blocked the road. The eventual winner took clever advantage of that moment, National Coach Koos Moerenhout told the Dutch press afterwards. "That was a nice story, though," the coach laughed broadly.

"Mathieu had to go to the toilet, and we were just by a house, so he went inside," was the anecdote from Moerenhout. "For a small errand? I think it was for something more," he said, winking.

Van der Poel himself also addressed it during his press conference. "The protest lasted a long time and the need was great, but it wasn't just me," laughed the winner of the rainbow jersey to the international media. "So we went into that house with several riders. Thank you to those people," says Van der Poel to the Scottish owners of the house in no man's land, who now have had a world champion on their toilet.

Moerenhout, as the national coach, could have used that pause for a tactical intervention, but that didn't work out due to various circumstances. "We had no reception at all, in that nature park. It was a weird delay, of course, so we had to get back into the race afterward." Van der Poel subsequently ended up in the second group for a while but was eventually able to return to the front peloton before the local circuit in Glasgow was undertaken. Empowered by the shed weight, he raced towards the world title in a way that was uniquely his own...