Mathieu van der Poel also crashes: "My finger hurts, but I think it's not too bad"

Mathieu van der Poel did not defend his victory in Milan-San Remo. The Dutchman was still with Tadej Pogacar and Tom Pidcock on the Cipressa, but he definitively dropped on the Poggio and eventually finished eighth. "I’m quite disappointed," he said afterward to HLN.

Van der Poel, like Pogacar and Wout van Aert, crashed just before the Cipressa but was able to rejoin before the penultimate climb began. "I got hit by a Lidl-Trek bike," he explained about his crash. "My team brought me back well, but on the Cipressa, I already felt I wasn’t great. My finger hurts, but I think it’s manageable."

"On the Cipressa, I pushed at my own pace and then Tadej also passed me. I was with the group when I had to be, but I didn’t feel super. I said on the radio: I can’t hold my handlebars well anymore. I tried," he added in an interview with NOS.

On the Poggio, Pogacar ultimately dealt the finishing blow to the Dutchman. "He was very strong. On the Poggio, I quickly had to do my own thing, and then I tried to keep my own pace like Ganna did last year, but unfortunately, Tadej and Tom didn’t watch each other," he concluded.