However, he quickly admitted that he had given everything and that he was not unhappy to reach the finish at the Quai des Ardennes after a difficult day. “Honestly, I still wonder how I finished 3rdhe will say. From the start of the race, I had the feeling that it would be complicated because my legs were heavy.”
As if that wasn't enough, he was delayed when a massive fall took place in front of him about a hundred miles from the line. “I was taking off my gloves and pads when it fell in front of me.” Pogacar's UAE were in the good group. “We then had to make a big collective effort to plug the hole, will explain again the winner of the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix. It cost me a lot of energy.”
But he did not try to use this fact of racing as an excuse. “Even with the best legs, I couldn't have followed Tadej when he accelerated into the Redoute. The decompression after the Ronde and Roubaix was perhaps greater than I had imagined.”
The first half of the Tour before going to the Games?
In any case, he has no regrets about having left his comfort zone. He, once again, showed all his knowledge of racing by never panicking and smoothing out his effort to be able to get back to the chasing group (with the exception of Romain Bardet, 2nd). “If I will ever be able to win here? I don't know. I would just have to prepare for that, perhaps skipping the cobbled monuments. Now I understand why everyone says it’s very complicated to combine Flandriennes and Ardennaises.”
After this high-flying spring, van der Poel will take a little rest before discussing the rest of his program with his staff. It could be that he is only doing the first part of the Tour in order to prepare for his double Olympic objective: the road race and the mountain bike event.
