The past 37 editions of the elite men’s road race at the UCI Road World Championships have brought silver and bronze medals for the Netherlands. Since Joop Zoetemelk’s win in 1985, Dylan van Baarle, Steven Rooks, and Léon van Bon have all stood on the final podium next to the rainbow jersey wearer.
But none of them, nor the multitude of stars and talented riders the Dutch have sent to the Worlds over the years, had managed to take the rainbows before Mathieu van der Poel’s solo ride in Glasgow on Sunday.
The win, taken via a 22km solo ride after attacking an elite lead group, brought a “big emotion”, Dutch team coach Koos Morenhout said after the 271km race.
“You can never guarantee that they win because you never know how the race evolves in the end. But it’s a big emotion,” he told Cyclingnews after watching his leader ride away from Wout van Aert, Tadej Pogačar, and Mads Pedersen to score gold on the road for the first time.
“The fact that he was there with the best was comforting and exciting and then he rode away and had that crash… We didn’t know exactly how far he was in far of those other three best riders in the world. Then his advantage started to build again and if you see that he has 1:30 you know the chance is fairly big that he’s going to make it.”
“Once you’re there behind them and you see him riding and he was also able to enjoy the last 5km more or less to, to enjoy his victory and to enjoy the crowds. For us, that was emotional to see.”
The win was, of course, not without drama. From the race-stopping protest early on to the crash shortly after Mathieu van der Poel‘s attack that left him with a broken shoe and tears to his jersey and shorts, there were few dull moments across the course of the six-hour race.
The slide-out on a wet bend on the technical Glasgow city circuit had hearts in mouths, and with no race radio for those chasing or for Van der Poel himself, then 20 seconds up the road, it was anyone’s guess as to who would prevail. At least, that was before he got back up and continued to make time on the chase group.
“I don’t think it was much of a factor,” Moerenhout said of the lack of radios for those chasing Van der Poel. “In the end, he was already that fast on the bike and in his rhythm and gaining ground.”
“We passed Mads, Wout, and Tadej and saw that their race was on the limit. If you have a radio, you can say to speed up but if the legs aren’t there anymore then it’s over. If it would’ve hurt him then it’d be a different…
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