These Wollongong Worlds only lasted regarding thirty kilometers for Mathieu Van der Poelone of the main candidates for victory: following an altercation with two teenage girls in the corridor of his hotel last night, the Dutchman was taken to the police station where he was charged before being released on bail. He returned to the hotel at four o’clock in the morning, but it was “mentally in pieces”as pointed out by its sporting director chez Alpecin-Deceuninck Christoph Roodhooft.
In the followingmath, the race was very spectacular: the French team set fire to the powder in the only ascent of Mount Keira, more than 220 kilometers from the finish. Behind the eleven breakaways of the first hour, 35 riders isolated themselves from the rest of the peloton, including Wout van Aert, Pieter Serry, Romain Bardet, Pavel Sivakov, Tadej Pogacar…
They counted up to two minutes ahead of the rest of the peloton, where Remco Evenepoel, Julian Alaphilippe, Michael Matthews… The Germans managed to make the junction, but before that five men, including Pieter Serry, Pavel Sivakov or Ben O’Connormanaged to get back on the leading group.
Just under 80 kilometers from the finish, the Italian Samuel Battistella placed two attacks in Mount Pleasant and caused a break in the leading group, while in the peloton the Frenchman Quentin Pacher went on the offensive and took regarding fifteen riders in its wheel, including the Belgians Remco Evenepoel, Stan Dewulf et Quinten Hermansbut also big names like Nairo Quintana et Romain Bardet.
On the next ascent of Mount Pleasant, 60 kilometers from the finish, Quinten Hermans set the tempo before the first attack of Remco Evenepoel. But the winner of the Vuelta failed to make a difference … before putting one back, without much more success.
The gap, of two minutes fifty kilometers from the finish, melted during the penultimate passage in Mount Pleasant: Tadej Pogacar and especially, Valentin Madouas increased the pace and brought the peloton down to one minute… But in the process, the gap went up to two minutes!
Remco Evenepoel then placed a new attack, to which only the Kazakh Alexey Lutsenko was able to answer. The duo gradually widened the gap on their former breakaway companions. But 26 kilometers from the finish, the Belgian prodigy placed a new banderilla and isolated himself in the lead to go and win another prestigious victory…
