‘There were 20 riders behind him’: Van der Poel leaves peloton stunned with 175km solo

The Alpecin-Premier Tech rider attacked almost immediately in Sunday's final stage and spent almost the entire day alone at the front. Behind him, however, the chase was being driven at a serious pace, with around 20 riders trying to bring the Dutchman back.

Oliver Naesen (Decathlon CMA CGM) was among those in the peloton and initially believed Van der Poel was using the race as one final hard training session ahead of the World Championships in Montréal.

“Strategically, we thought this actually worked quite well for us,” Naesen told Sporza. “He’s going to make it a hard training session here. Solo for almost 180km? We didn’t think that was going to happen.”

The peloton did not immediately panic, but the pace remained high as the riders tried to limit the damage.

“We were riding really hard,” Naesen said. “The power numbers were getting close to those of a semi-classic. I can assure you, it wasn’t a chill day.

“There is also quite a lot of support from the camera motorcycles and photographers in the peloton, which means the speed was really high. There were also 20 riders behind him.”

Despite that, Van der Poel continued to hold his advantage. “I constantly had the feeling: one man alone, with all of this behind him, that can’t end well,” Naesen said. 

Instead, the gap remained intact until the finish. “Wrong again,” Naesen laughed.

Davide Piganzoli, who secured the overall victory with Visma | Lease a Bike, was also part of the chase and was impressed by what he saw.

“He’s amazing,” Piganzoli said afterwards. “He was alone at the front and, in the bunch, I think six or seven riders were pulling full gas and we never caught him.”

The attack had apparently not been part of Van der Poel's pre-race plan. Naesen later spoke to his Alpecin-Premier Tech teammate Silvan Dillier, who said the move had not been discussed during the morning briefing.

“That’s just Mathieu getting up in the morning and thinking: let’s do something wild,” Naesen said.

Van der Poel eventually finished 1:04 ahead of Mikkel Frølich Honoré to take his eighth victory of the season. The 175km solo was the longest winning solo effort of the 21st century.

His performance offered another indication of his condition ahead of the World Championships. He had described himself as having “super legs” on the final day in Luxembourg, and his solo suggested he was right.

Naesen did not believe the long solo necessarily meant Van der Poel had gone completely into the red.

“It wasn’t an eight-hour effort, or a six-and-a-half-hour classic,” he said. “If he says he rode his own watts, maybe he didn’t even go over the limit. Riders like this can process so much work.”

Whether Van der Poel’s Luxembourg raid was the perfect final hit-out or simply a case of following his instincts, the result was the same: he left the peloton with more questions than answers. In less than a week, he will have the chance to provide another answer on the roads of Montréal.