“It was impressive, but purely in his own interest” - Even Alpecin teammates were questioning Mathieu van der Poel's final stage assault at Tirreno-Adriatico

Mathieu van der Poel’s final stage blast at Tirreno-Adriatico was one of the most talked-about moments of the week, not because it won him the stage, but because of what it said about his priorities.

On a day that had been expected to end in a routine sprint in San Benedetto del Tronto, Van der Poel instead lit up the climbs, forcing the pace hard enough to split the race and distance a string of fast men. In the process, he even rode clear of his own sprint leader Jasper Philipsen, turning what should have been an Alpecin lead-out day into something far more complicated.

From inside the peloton, Olivier Naesen was one of the riders who saw it unfold at close quarters, and his verdict neatly captured why the move has become such a talking point.

“It was impressive, but his move was purely in his own interest,” Naesen said in the HLN Podcast after the stage. “They were asking him to stop and slow down.”

That detail is what gives the episode its edge. Van der Poel was not simply riding strongly. He was apparently pushing on while even voices from his own team were trying to calm the effort down. For a squad that had started the day with Philipsen as one of the obvious sprint favourites, it raised the obvious question of whether Van der Poel was riding the stage for Alpecin or for himself.

That is what made the move so controversial. The final stage was never supposed to be one of the week’s decisive battlegrounds. Isaac del Toro had the overall almost wrapped up, the route flattened out towards the finish, and the script pointed towards a bunch sprint.

Instead, Van der Poel turned the middle of the day into a test of survival.

He drove the pace on the climbs, kept going after the break had been caught and stretched the race for kilometre after kilometre on the run back towards the Adriatic coast. Riders like Jonathan Milan and Sam Welsford were forced to dig deep just to stay in touch, while Philipsen was one of the casualties of the effort. Only later, once the race settled on the finishing circuit, did the sprinters begin to regain control.

From that perspective, Naesen’s reading makes sense. The move was undeniably damaging to rivals, but it also looked very much like a rider using race conditions to sharpen himself for what comes next.

Naesen did not seem to need long to draw that line to Milano-Sanremo. “Van der Poel has convinced me that he is the number one favourite to win Milano-Sanremo.”

That is the wider significance of what happened in Tirreno. Van der Poel did not just show good legs. He showed the kind of explosive strength that can break a race open before the finish, precisely the quality that makes him so dangerous in Sanremo.

Naesen was not alone in coming away from the week impressed. Greg Van Avermaet, speaking alongside him, went even further in his assessment of the Dutchman’s condition. “This was one of the best versions of Mathieu I’ve ever seen,” Van Avermaet said. “What he did to the climbers on those gradients, which should actually disadvantage him because of his weight. The fact that he still had something left on the final day and still wanted to race says a lot.”

That verdict matters because it pushes the story beyond a simple tactical debate. Van der Poel’s move may have complicated the stage for his own team, but it also left a clear message for the rest of the peloton before the first Monument of the season.

Even so, neither Naesen nor Van Avermaet framed Milano-Sanremo as a one-man race. Both also pointed to the level Wout van Aert is carrying into the spring. “He’s at a very high level. The level he needs to be at to win races,” Van Avermaet said, before arguing that Van Aert’s best chance may be to embrace the underdog role rather than carry the burden of being expected to attack first.

Naesen struck a similarly optimistic note. “Can Wout win? Absolutely, because he’s already done it.”

That leaves Tirreno’s final stage as more than just an odd tactical episode. It became a revealing preview of the tension that now hangs over Milano-Sanremo - Van der Poel looking brutally strong, Van Aert still very much in the picture, and the sense that one rider’s training effort in Italy may already have reshaped the Monument conversation.