“I think now the real racing can start.”
Those were Mathieu van der Poel‘s words a day before the Tour de France hits the cobbles of Paris-Roubaix on Wednesday.
The Dutchman was speaking ahead of the fourth stage on France’s northern coast, where, as was the case on stages 2 and 3 in Denmark, he was working for the chances of his teammate, sprinter Jasper Philipsen.
Alpecin-Deceuninck didn’t get the stage win they were seeking, though, with Philipsen instead taking second at eight seconds down on the solo attacker – and race leader – Wout van Aert. The team’s attention will now turn back to their main star for stage 5, the 157km run from Lille to Arenberg.
Speaking in Dunkerque ahead of stage 4, Van der Poel said that the real nervousness will start with the peloton having completed the ‘rest day’ journey back to France on Monday.
“It’s been a few quiet days in Denmark but also the course in the wind didn’t really provide the race circumstances to do something. But from today we’ll be really nervous, I think. Also, I think there are some chances for us as a team.
“Not that much actually,” was his response when asked about what preparation he did for stage 5, where he’ll be one of the hot favourites for victory alongside long-time rival Wout van Aert, Paris-Roubaix winner Dylan Van Baarle, and Trek-Segafredo pairing Mads Pedersen and Jasper Stuyven, among others.
“It’s just a really small Paris-Roubaix,” he continued. “It’s not a lot of sections here but for sure it’s like every time they’ll run up into the section is going to be more nervous than the sections itself.
“I think it’s just going to be really nervous. If you already can stay out of out of trouble and don’t have a mechanical, I think you can already go far.”
While April’s Paris-Roubaix, as well as the other cobbled Classics, are day-long races suited for the pure specialists, cobbled stages at the Tour are a different story.
Here, riders such as Tadej Pogačar, Aleksandr Vlasov, and Ben O’Connor will be thrown into the mix, with far more teams battling for the front of the peloton alongside those Classics squads whose focus lies away from the general classification – such as Alpecin-Deceuninck, Trek-Segafredo, and QuickStep-AlphaVinyl.
“That’s what’s difficult about the Tour and other Grand Tours as well,” Van der Poel said. “The GC guys also want to be there in front, and that makes it really nervous and hectic. In the end we have the stage win to play for, but they can lose a lot more so…
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