Dries van Gestel: "It makes me feel good to finally be able to win a race"

Dries van Gestel has for many years already been showing his potential in the classics but only this weekend did he manage to grab his first win in a one-day race at the Profronde van Drenthe. The TotalEnergies had finished in the Top10 of Le Samyn and Kuurne - Bruxelles - Kuurne already recently, and has now taken the biggest win of his career.

“The whole day went perfectly. As I was alone in the leading group, it was not necessarily up to me to ride. So I was able to keep enough energy to react to all the attacks and place a counter in the last kilometers," van Gestel said in a post-race interview.

He had made the split where Arkéa Samsic and Jumbo-Visma were working throughout the last hour of racing. Van Gestel himself made the move on the final ascent up to the VAM-berg with 14 kilometers to go which saw the group reduced to six riders which would end up fighting for the race victory. Later on, the battle was not favourable to him as Jumbo-Visma had two riders in the group and pre-race favourite Hugo Hofstetter was also present. The Dutch relied on a combination of timing and power to deliver the decisive attack with three kilometers to go and hold off the chasing group: "When I attacked, I saw that I had managed to create a gap. I looked behind me and saw that everyone was on fire. So I had to manage to keep my pace to hope to win. I had time to take advantage of the moment in the final stretch. I always felt like I could pull off a shot, but I always lacked that little something to tip the race in my favor."

"It makes me feel good to finally be able to win a race. I want to continue on this good dynamic to obtain the best result with the team and to help my leaders Peter [Saga] and Anthony [Turgis] as much as possible during the next deadlines." This week van Gestel is set to be leading the team at the GP de Denain and the Bredene Koksijde Classic, before turning his attention to the main classics block where he'll be an important piece within the TotalEnergies puzzle.