Mathieu van der Poel chose an alternative approach to the Tour de France this year, opting to race in Belgium and seize the explosive hilly days to gain form instead of the mountains as he has in the past. In the opening day of the Baloise Belgium Tour he delivered fireworks.
“I hope that I recover well this week and that I can race attractively. I have that fresh feeling anyway. For a day like today... That's why I'm here and not in the Tour de Suisse," the Dutchman said in a post-race interview. Despite not being overly hard, today's stage - which ended in a bunch sprint - saw plenty attacks in the final 90 kilometers, often with van der Poel present.
He in fact spent much of those final two hours of racing in front groups, putting on the pressure in rival teams, gaining time in the intermediate sprints and burning through the domestiques of rival teams who looked to help their sprinters in the finale.
His attack, together with Rasmus Tiller, Casper Pedersen and Jasper de Buyst, was brought back in the final kilometers, but that didn't stop him from leading out Jasper Philipsen into the stage victory, wrapping up a brilliant day from Alpecin-Deceuninck. Going into stage 2 van der Poel sits second in the overall classification 2 seconds away from his teammate.
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