2023-08-06 15:44:30
On Sunday in Glasgow, the Dutchman became the first rider in history to become world road and cyclo-cross champion.
On the wet roads of Glasgow (Scotland), Mathieu van der Poel surfed on his competitors to win the World Cycling Championships for the first time, Sunday August 6th. The Dutchman placed the winning move 22 kilometers from the end, to extricate himself from the leading group and beat Tadej Pogacar, Wout van Aert and Mads Pedersen, friends of an XXL breakaway in which no Frenchman could keep up the pace. .
The solo rider of “MVDP” was not disturbed for a penny by a fall in one of the countless bends of this dented circuit. At 28, he will forever remain the first rider in history to be world champion on the road and in cyclo-cross.
Where will his ogre appetite stop? Already winner of Paris-Roubaix and Milan-San Remo this season, the formidable one-day race hunter has added a new line to his titanic record. In a winding course carved out for his qualities as a puncher and under a drizzle worthy of the spring classics he cherishes so much, Van der Poel made it rain or shine to wear the rainbow jersey.
Van Aert still second
His attack, judiciously placed when his counter group caught up with the needy Alberto Bettiol – launched alone in a race against the impossible with a tiny margin in mind – left his rivals speechless. Never exhausted by the endless curves – one of which made him fall – and quick to relaunch in the 14% bump climbed ten times, the ancestor of Raymond Poulidor took more than a minute to second, his eternal rival Wout van Aert.
Still second, as in 2019, the Belgian continues to collect places of honor. He had the merit of hanging on to the end to appear on this five-star podium, completed by Tadej Pogacar, affected at the margin by his disappointment on the Tour. Distanced 32 kilometers from the finish, defending champion Remco Evenepoel was unable to defend his crown, and showed that he also knew how to bow out in a one-day race.
The Blues never in the game
In his misfortune, he was not the only one to lose the wheel of the cadors. Traditional troublemaker of the Worlds since the arrival at its head of Thomas Voeckler, in 2019, the French team has thus failed to influence the race. Unlike their rugby buddies the day before not far away, they didn’t even have time to believe it.
The puncture of the best asset of the moment, Christophe Laporte, forced to retire at the same time as Julian Alaphilippe 85 kilometers from the finish, gave a blow to blue ambitions. The failure of Valentin Madouas 50 kilometers further, washed out by the frantic pace of the Danes and the Belgians, definitively buried them. With Benoît Cosnefroy, the French champion was the only one of the delegation to finish this trying race, on which 143 riders threw in the towel.
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