Mathieu van Der Poel takes brutal Renewi Tour stage win on the Muur van Geraardsbergen
The win is Van der Poel's first win in three days of competition since the Dutchman abandoned the Tour de France, suffering from pneumonia. Finishing second, Arnaud De Lie is the new race leader.
Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck) took his first win since withdrawing from the Tour de France with pneumonia on Friday, winning the queen stage of the Renewi Tour.
Van der Poel was part of a three-man group which arrived at the bottom of the race’s key climb, the Muur van Geraardsbergen. With the finish line coming halfway up the fabled ascent, before the steepest gradients and the toughest cobbles, he out-sprinted Arnaud De Lie (Lotto) with Tim Wellens (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) in third.
The three riders emerged from the final full ascent of the Muur, 32km from the finish and holding off a spirited chase from four others, though that group had included Van der Poel’s team mate, Tibor Del Grosso. The chasers managed to get within 15 seconds of the leading trio, but were unable to catch them.
Van der Poel tried to go it alone, attacking on Bosberg with 27km to go, and Wellens made his own effort as they approached the town, but the race ended in a three-man sprint. De Lie opened up first, but Van der Poel was able to come over the top and take victory.
With two similarly lumpy stages to come De Lie leads the general classification by one second ahead of Van der Poel, with Wellens 21 seconds down in third with two similarly lumpy stages remaining.
The win marked a remarkable day for Van der Poel, who attacked twice during the race, once with almost 100km to go on Berg-ten Houte, then again on the second of two ascents of the Bosberg, with 27km remaining.
How it unfolded
The word iconic is much overused in cycling, but if it’s permitted for any place in the sport, Geraardsbergen’s famed Kapel Muur is it. And while stage three of the Renewi Tour wasn’t the longest of the five, nor did it have the most vertical ascent, it climbed the Muur twice, and finished in the town halfway up its fabled slopes, making Friday easily the race’s queen stage.
Add in two ascents of the Bosberg on a final circuit around the town, and not only do we have a throwback race to the spring classics, but the perfect canvas for the peloton to paint an explosive race.
First, though, were the flat-ish opening kilometres of the 181km stage, the peloton rolling out of Aalter and heading first south then east, reaching the first of the 14 Flemish bergs, the Rotelenberg, with 74km done. From there, they tackled the Kortekeer, Taiaenberg, Berg-ten-Houte, Brique-Potterée for the stage’s visit to Wallonia, Parikenberg, Denderoodberg before crossing the line for the first time with 66.8km remaining.
No breakaway was able to form during a furiously fast opening loop around Aalter, but after 20km, a group of 11 finally got away, soon building a gap.
Aaron Gate (XDS-Astana), Ceriel Desal (Wagner Bazin WB), Petr Kelemen (Tudor), Max Walscheid (Jayco-AlUla), Johan Jacobs (Groupama-FDJ), Filip Maciejuk (Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe), Matevž (Bahrain Victorious), Laurenz Rex (Intermarché-Wanty), Edoardo Affini (Visma | Lease a Bike), Jensen Plowright (Aplecin-Deceuninck) and Igor Arrieta (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) reached the Rotelenberg with a lead of 3:36.
Just inside the 100km to go marker, on Berg-ten-Houte, pre-race favourite Mathieu van der Poel sent a statement of intent to his rivals, attacking and opening up a small gap alongside Maxim Van Gils (Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe), while behind them the peloton split in two. Van der Poel and Van Gils made good progress, quickly taking a minute out of the leading group while panic reigned in the peloton behind. The UAE Team Emirates-XRG team of defending champion, Tim Wellens took up the chase, trying to get the two attackers back before they reached the circuit.
They didn’t quite succeed, but no peloton survives contact with the Muur, and Wellens caught Van der Poel as the gradient ramped up and the cobbles became more vicious, the bunch splitting. A few kilometres later, at the top of the first ascent of the Bosberg, the leaders’ advantage was only 40 seconds on a group including Wellens, Van der Poel, Thibaut Nys (Lidl-Trek), Matej Mohorič (Bahrain Victorious and Arnaud de Lie (Lotto) though a reduced peloton was hot on their heels.
Just inside the final 50km, and well before the leading group reached Geraardsbergen for the second time, the chasing group reached the breakaway, forming a group of 22, with the peloton chasing hard only 30 seconds back.
Only 20 of them reached the finish line in the front group, and of them, only Van der Poel and De Lie survived Wellens’ brutal attack, a carbon copy move of last year’s. Equally, De Lie and Wellens were unable to live with Van der Poel’s move on the Bosberg, they soon came back, resisting the attentions of the four-man chasing group.
