Cyclingflash
Chasers gamble and lose in E3 Saxo Classic: "It was truly bizarre"

Chasers gamble and lose in E3 Saxo Classic: "It was truly bizarre"

You can hardly imagine it: Mathieu van der Poel seemed done for in the final kilometers of the E3 Saxo Classic, but ultimately managed to take the win after the chasers were unwilling to close the last gap on the Dutchman.

Stan Dewulf was one of those chasers and shared his account with VTM afterwards. What exactly happened in those crazy final kilometers? "No one wanted to close the last meters so close to the finish. As a rider, you don’t want to waste your energy then. Everyone was counting on their own sprint and no one wanted to close that final gap themselves."

Van der Poel thus got a final lifeline, grabbed it with both hands, and crossed the line as the winner. "I saw that Mathieu first waited, then pushed on and accelerated," Dewulf explains. "I knew it would be tough if we didn’t react quickly, but if you close that gap yourself, it’s almost impossible to still launch your own sprint afterwards."

Taking a gamble
"It was really bizarre. I didn’t quite know what was happening myself. We got very close, but I was gambling that someone else would close the gap so I could launch the sprint myself. The strongest rider won here, but there were opportunities."

The rider from Decathlon CMA CGM—who was part of the early break—also just missed out in the sprint for the remaining podium spots. "It was a very strange sprint. Florian went around from the outside. I still had a small acceleration left in my legs, but such a long sprint… I was in the early breakaway and it was a very exhausting race. I had a small burst, but no legs for a long sprint anymore."