Michal Kwiatkowski believes we'll see better Mathieu van der Poel at Liege-Bastogne-Liege next week: "We were expecting too much from Mathieu"

Three years after the 2021's heartbreak, Tom Pidcock was finally able to raise his hands at the Amstel Gold Race. No photo finish could take away first big victory from Pidcock this time. INEOS Grenadiers devoted their tactic on Sunday to the Brit, his teammate Michal Kwiatkowski told Eurosport afterwards.

"I felt like we had everything under the control," started Kwiatkowski. "We took the responsibility for the race from the start. The headwind made it hard to accelerate, people kept coming back after each climb, but Tom was at the right place at the right time. He had very good legs and finally took the victory he well deserved."

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While Ineos will hold a celebration tonight, Mathieu van der Poel will have something to think about. The World champion was toothless today and such performance won't be enough to win his third Monument of the season next Sunday. "We were expecting too much from Mathieu," thinks Kwiatkowski. "He's always targetting the biggest races and I think his eyes are already on Liege-Bastogne-Liege."

"It's never really easy to recover from Paris-Roubaix, I think we could see that in Vermeersch as well, that he wasn't there while he was at Flemish classics. But he'll bounce back from that. But at the same time Tom also did Roubaix, so chapeau to him."

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