"I was crawling towards the finish" - Mathieu van der Poel explains Koppenberg chaos and suffering at 'hardest Ronde I’ve ever done'

The Tour of Flanders never gets easier when you're a strong rider, you just race faster. That is a good way to describe Mathieu van der Poel's Sunday where he took a dominant win, but it required a brutal effort that he told in detail following the race.

“I knew once it started raining that the Koppenberg would be chaos. When all the other teams started attacking us, I asked my team to create a controllable situation until the Koppenberg, because I knew from there I would be alone anyway," van der Poel said in a press conference following the win. "I think they did an amazing job.”

Alpecin-Deceuninck saw Mads Pedersen on the attack but had Gianni Vermeersch with a ready response. Without other riders making that important move, the Belgian team had numbers to control the race as they needed, whilst Team Visma | Lease a Bike's lack of depth was noticeable. Van der Poel attacked on the brutal Koppenberg, taking advantage of the slippery conditions to create a gap even bigger than what he'd expect.

What followed was an hour-long solo through many sectors including the Oude Kwaremont and the Paterberg for the final time and the final 13-kilometer pan-flat stretch into Oudenaarde. Perhaps the latter was the toughest: “I was crawling towards the finish, I wasn’t even close to the powers I normally ride in the end. It makes me think a bit of Harrogate (the 2019 World Championships, ed.), to be honest. The circumstances were a bit the same. I was quite empty and that was maybe the hardest Ronde I’ve ever done."

"There were attacks from far, the first hour was quite fast, there were rainy conditions, we had to go full on every climb… It was a really hard one. I don’t think I was ever so happy to see the last kilometer," he admits. However at the finish line a third title in Flanders, which takes him to the matched record together with riders such as Johan Museeuw, Tom Boonen and Fabian Cancellara. If the 29-year old wins again in these roads, he will become the sole record holder in the race.

“Records are not something that keep me occupied," van der Poel says however, "my career is already way more than I would have expected. I’m really fucked right now, so it will take time to realize what I’ve done. It’s something I could never have dreamed, to win the Ronde as world champion. That’s something special.”