"It is really encouraging how he quickly got back on his bike and passed many riders" - Analysts don't write Wout van Aert off for remaining classics

Mathieu van der Poel was outstanding in the E3 Saxo Classic. The world champion benefited from a fall of his great competitor Wout van Aert at the foot of the Paterberg. However, according to many analysts not everything is lost yet for the Belgian.

The key moment was of course Van Aert's fall on the Paterberg. "Wout sees that Mathieu wants to go and for that he has to overtake numbers two and three to follow Mathieu. But if you don't feel good there, then you just don't do anything and you just have to hope that everyone else keeps the wheel. So that's a good sign," notes Laurens Ten Dam in Live Slow Ride Fast.

Van der Poel did not look back and accelerated agaun on the famous climb. "That was a really impressive feat of cycling. He even keeps pedaling when he gets to the top and I think that's where he gets his biggest lead," says Thomas Dekker. "He must have trained really hard for that in Spain. I think they need fresh men every day."

Ten Dam and Dekker are certainly not writing Van Aert off yet. "It is really encouraging that after his fall he quickly got back on the bike and passed many riders. Especially at the top of the Oude Kwaremont you can see that he is really good, but there he may have made the wrong choice by going alone. He would have been better off letting Matteo Jorgenson close the gap to twenty seconds, but hey, he just felt the momentum."