An unleashed Mathieu van der Poel once again won the Tour of Flanders last Sunday. The Dutchman from Alpecin-Deceuninck crossed the line victoriously after a solo of no less than 45 kilometers. But the question will always remain: what if Wout van Aert was there?
Van der Poel became a member of a very exclusive club yesterday. Just like Johan Museeuwn, Tom Boonen and Fabian Cancellara, he won the Tour of Flanders for the third time. MVDP completely blew away the competition, they had to fight for second place.
The key question
But what if Wout van Aert had not crashed in Dwars door Vlaanderen? Sports director Grischa Niermann weighed in on that question Sporza.
“If you want to keep Mathieu in check, you need Wout,” said the German. “I think Wout was the only one who could have followed Mathieu. Maybe they would have fought it out in a sprint or maybe Mathieu also outran him. You don’t know, but I certainly believe that Wout would have been the equal.”
Did what we could
“If you take the top favorite to the slopes like this, Mathieu van der Poel will drive everyone out of the wheel,” Niermann continued. “We wanted to race earlier and create a situation where Mathieu had to drive towards us. Now the best rider has won. We have to make do with that. We did what we wanted and above all what we could.”
