On the off-chance that I ever find myself at a music concert with some of the men’s WorldTour peloton in attendance, there would be one rider I’d look for to help me squeeze through the crowd to the front row. Bora-Hansgrohe’s Danny van Poppel is the man for the job.
As he’s proven in the opening two sprint stages of this year’s Vuelta a España, Van Poppel can sniff out a gap in a bunch of riders hurtling along at breakneck speeds in a way which is unfathomable to us watching on TV. He can duck and dive through small openings to put himself into the perfect position: out of trouble, but rarely in the wind. When Van Poppel looks like he might be boxed in, he can wriggle out of situations, chancing his luck like a kid trying to get out of being given detention.
Van Poppel acts on instinct, he has the gift of lightning speed reaction times that are common among many of the world’s best lead-out men – think Michael Mørkøv or Jacopo Guarnieri. He sees the line he wants to take and can adjust quickly if required. He calculates whether to choose the right or left side of the road based on the wind and which wheel he thinks is the right one to follow. In sprints with speeds upwards of 50 km/ph, just a split second of hesitation can be the end of any chance of getting a result. A lead-out man needs confidence in his convictions, he needs to commit fully when the moment is right and he needs to remain calm in the face of chaos all around him.
But among all of this, perhaps the most important key to Van Poppel’s success is his awareness of where his sprinter is. In the second stage of the 2022 Vuelta a España, Van Poppel was leading out Irish rider Sam Bennett who hasn’t won a Grand Tour stage for the last two seasons. As the peloton entered the final 800 metres of the 160km stage, things were crazy. There had been crashes to avoid, roundabouts to navigate, road furniture to hop over, GC teams trying to keep their leaders safe. As this happened all around him and as the stage reached its dizzying climax, Van Poppel did one thing: he kept looking over his shoulder.
Image: A.S.O/Charly Lopez
Three times in the final stretch to the line, the Dutchman checked where Bennett was. He positioned the Irish sprinter perfectly, still leading him out while Trek-Segafredo’s Mads Pedersen (who finished second on the stage) had already opened up his sprint. The speed with which Van Poppel brought Bennett to the front was something to…