Van Uden after breakthrough win ("didn’t face the wind once") lands crucial blow in relegation battle: "180 points!"

Even before the stage began, it was clear that Van Uden was feeling good. “I feel ready, and the boys are ready too. If they do it like they did in Turkey, then I hope I can finish it off for them,” the winner told Cycling Pro. It was expected to be a tricky finale, but Van Uden didn’t quite see it that way. “I think it’s okay. Everyone should have seen it, it’s easy to look up. If you have questions, you can ask. It’ll be tight in some places, but then you just have to be at the front. Then you’ll be fine. We’ll see how it goes.”

And so it happened. In the final kilometre, filled with twists and turns, Picnic PostNL brought Van Uden all the way to the front, and he sealed the deal without blinking. “I didn’t do it alone, we did it as a team,” he rightly pointed out afterwards in the flash interview. “All the guys here, the equipment, the staff, and everyone back at the head office, everyone delivered amazing work. I didn’t have to take a single metre of wind until the final 200 metres. I know I’ve got a strong, long sprint in the legs, so I went for it and just hoped it would be enough.”

As he mentioned before the stage, Van Uden had full confidence in his lead-out, especially Bram Welten. His fellow Dutchman dropped him off in the perfect spot. “We’ve been doing strong lead-outs all season, like in Turkey last week. I know all I have to do is follow Bram and the rest of the guys. They did an amazing job, and I’m really happy I could give something back.”

The win came as a surprise to many, and even Van Uden himself seemed a bit overwhelmed. But it didn’t come completely out of nowhere. “It’s not really a surprise. I know the guys, and everyone else, believe in me. I just need to find that belief in myself a bit more sometimes, but this helps. Everyone’s been helping me with confidence and now it’s paying off.” A win this early in the Giro, what more could be in store? “We don’t know what the future holds. We’re living in the moment, and right now it feels really good,” Van Uden concluded.

Alongside the stage winner, lead-out man Bram Welten was also one of the heroes of the day. The Dutchman delivered his sprinter perfectly in the final kilometre. “That last lap was so hectic,” he said afterwards. “The team had to work so hard to stay at the front. We had to fight at every key moment, but we kept regrouping. We knew that if we could get Casper into position for the sprint, he’d finish it off. And that’s exactly what he did.”

The win wasn’t just beautiful, it was crucial. In the relegation battle, XDS Astana had moved ahead of the Dutch team, but now Picnic PostNL leapfrogs back above Alexandre Vinokourov’s squad. “180 points,” Welten smiled. “But it’s more than just that. Once you’re in that winning mood, it only gets better. The teamwork we showed today is something we’ve really been working on. This time, it all clicked for us.”