A hundred yards or so past the finish line, Neilson Powless stood in the middle of the road, shaking his head in disbelief and smiling at the same time. A Tour of Flanders debut can have that effect, especially when you spend almost 100km off the front and reach Oudenaarde in fifth place.
The Ronde is an intoxicating kind of madness.
“These races…” Powless said, as the knot of reporters huddled around him began to loosen. “I thought it was over so many times today.”
Although winner Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) and runner-up Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck) would prove beyond his reach in the finale, Powless was among the best of the rest, narrowly missing out on the podium as he came home in a chasing group 1:12 down.
Powless only took his bow in the cobbled Classics last Wednesday, placing an assured third at Dwars door Vlaanderen. That performance, not to mention a confident display on the pavé at last year’s Tour de France, made the EF Education-EasyPost rider a highly-fancied outsider for the Tour of Flanders, even if his inexperience on this terrain still could have been an impediment.
It certainly felt that way when a brace of early crashes left Powless navigating these uncharted waters without the usual instruments to guide him.
“I knew I felt good, but I crashed twice and I lost my computer, so I was just relying on what I could get from my radio,” said Powless.
“I wasn’t sure how far into the race we were and when the climbs were coming. I just had to take them as they came. I constantly had to ask [directeur sportif] Andreas Klier what was coming up and I even had to ask the riders around me how far into the race we were.”
Attack
A Tour of Flanders debut is a confusing experience at the of best times. Most are left feeling as though they are chasing a race rather than participating in it. Powless, however, had the nous to realise that his best option was to get ahead of it.
“I was just a bit lost sometimes, but maybe it’s best to race on instinct like that,” said the North American, who joined fellow ‘shadow favourites’ Stefan Küng and Kasper Asgreen in a 10-man move that went clear on the Molenberg with 100km to race.
At one point, they would have a lead of almost three minutes over Pogačar, Wout van Aert (Jumbo-Visma) and Van der Poel, even if that advantage would begin to contract rapidly once the Big Three began running through their scales from the second ascent of the Kwaremont.
Pogačar and…
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