Jan Polanc: "When you get the chance it’s a special feeling"

UAE Team Emirates is having a very strong start to the season and after Matteo Trentin took Le Samyn yesterday, Jan Polanc took the win on what was a dominant collective performance which saw Juan Ayuso and Alessandro Covi complete the podium behind him.

“I felt good during the whole race, we knew Covi was the fastest of our guys so we were working with the idea of delivering him in a small group. I was dropped but pushed on a bit on the descent and saw that they were braking and looking at each other in the front group so I decided to go for it and it worked out well," Polanc said in a post-race interview.

After UAE made the front 22 rider split with six of their riders they were in a brilliant position to win the race, as they had the likes of Polanc, Covi, Ayuso and Formolo all in front and managed to drop some of the pre-race favourites. They attacked the final circuit hard and Polanc himself was on the attack before the decisive ascent putting on the pressure on Lorenzo Rota and Carlos Rodriguez who had survived the hard pace until then, before he was later dropped. In the final kilometers however, he came back to the front group on the wheel of Rodriguez and blasted past the group with a sudden attack that no-one could respond to, leading to a very important win for the Slovenian.

"I’d like to dedicate this win to my family. I’m a domestique who doesn’t win many races but when you get the chance it’s a special feeling," he added, emotionally. His calendar for the near future is still unknown but it is likely that he will be supporting Tadej Pogacar on the upcoming Tirreno-Adriatico judging by his form.