"I'm glad I tried anyway" - Mathieu van der Poel unable to make telling impact on gravel stage of Tour de France

Mathieu van der Poel was one of the fancied riders heading into the 2024 Tour de France's gravel stage 9. Despite a late attack however, the world champion was unable to make an impact at the pointy end of the race.

Having kept himself quiet for much of the day, just following the wheels at the front of the peloton, with just over 40km to go, van der Poel finally made an attack, joining the likes of Michael Matthews and Biniam Girmay in a late attempt to bridge across the breakaway. Ultimately, it was too little too late for this move and van der Poel crossed the line in 11th, 1:17 down on the eventual stage winner, Anthony Turgis.

"There wasn't much else to do. You know that the classification teams will ride full speed to those sections, after which it will come to a standstill. You couldn't do much then. At the end we rode away with a good group. I think everyone was also pretty much on the limit. It was a very tough day because of all those accelerations. It's a shame," reflected van der Poel ruefully in his post-stage interview with NOS.

"I think everyone was just on the limit. It was a really tough race. The peloton also went full throttle on every gravel sector. But you can feel that at the end," continues the world champion. "It wasn't great, but not bad either. I'm glad I tried anyway. It was a bit locked and the difference was a bit too big to try anything. We still managed to get away, but the gap was still too big."