"I thought this was a big race and that first place was important" - Alpecin boss lashes out at rivals harshly following Gent Wevelgem
Cycling
The fallout from Gent Wevelgem 2025 has seen a war of words between Alpecin-Deceuninck and the rest of the peloton, mostly because of a perceived lack of intent from Alpecin's rivals in the chase of lone leader Mads Pedersen towards the finale.
In his post-race interview, Alpecin-Deceuninck's leader, Jasper Philipsen vented his frustrations, singling out Soudal - Quick-Step as a team to blame. "Maybe it was a shame that Soudal-Quick Step didn't add another rider to the chase because, in the end, they still did a lead-out for Tim Merlier with just three riders," the Belgian fumed. "I had no one left because everyone had been used up. I’d rather take a gamble and win than settle for second."
Philipsen's team boss, Christoph Roodhooft joined in with his sprinter's frustration when speaking to the media in his own post-race interview. "We tried to ride for the first place, but it was naive to think that first place was important..." lamented Roodhooft in conversation with Wieler Revue among others. "Only three teams were riding. I thought this was a big race and that first place was important. I saw Uno-X Mobility and one person from Soudal - Quick-Step. One, while we put everyone in and ultimately left Jasper to his fate. If everyone had ridden like that, we would still have been riding for first place."
Sadly for Alpecin-Deceuninck, the chase down of Pedersen was not the only incident of frustration on a disappointing day at Gent Wevelgem. "First we had a puncture with Gianni Vermeersch," Roodhooft recalled. "Then there was no neutral car behind him and he ended up in the very last group with the dropped riders. Too bad, because I think there was enough room for a neutral car. That was the first annoyance of the day."
"Philipsen got a flat tire there and had to continue on Robbe Ghys' bike. We couldn't continue because of a crash, so he had to continue on Robbe's bike for a long time..." he adds with more frustration in his conclusion. "We knew that Lidl-Trek would take control of the race, and they did. But Jasper rode along to Wevelgem, right? He had a really good day. We were there, but we were constantly chasing the facts. That wasn't pleasant. Jasper was boxed in during the sprint, but he was also completely on his own. Jasper had been busy trying to win that race, right?"
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Chapeau to Mads Pedersen here today at Gent Wevelgem - criticised at E3, he's gone hard and solo before the Kemmelberg and held off the peloton to retain his 2024 title 👏🇩🇰#GW25 #GWmen pic.twitter.com/ngAliY9spX
— Mathew Mitchell (@MatMitchell30) March 30, 2025
i watched the race. jasper and roodhooft have a legit anger about this. alpecin burned everyone to pull it back. they did the SAME THING after the split in E3, burning all their guys and thus leaving mathieu to fend for himself (which worked out ok because van der poel is van der poel, but still…). yeah, christopher and jasper should be a little pissed this time.
It seems that in E3 it wasn’t legit to criticise teams that « took advantage » because there was no radio communication about the incident so they couldn’t know to slow down. Only one source so far but should be quite easy to verify.
maybe. what makes that a LITTLE fishy is that they suddenly hit the gas and started hammering it. even mathieu, who i’ve never heard complain about ANYTHING (other than teenage girls waking him up and being spit on by belgians) was pretty hacked off about the race tactics after the split. i think he was upset for what his teammates had to do, not for the fact he ended up isolated as a result.
Agreed, but if it was a radio thing then all the riders should have the same story and it would be easy to call anyone out. Kind of surprised this isn’t cleared up half officially afterwards, just like the Alaphilippe divorce, seems like once something spreads on the net it kind of gets accepted that everyone wants to have their own truth so no-one bothers to contest anything that’s verifiable anymore, we all just move on.
He’s already a star for me for HAVING complained about it, the recent trend having been, let them then try to take advantage by making them sign NDAs ;-)
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