Thijs Zonneveld reacts to incomprehensible ceasefire on stage 3: "And after three weeks they complain that big teams don't leave anything for them..."

Last year, many teams (and even more experts) have complained about Tadej Poagacar's greed after he went on to win six stages at each Grand Tour, not letting any bits to the "smaller" teams. Yet no teams tried to threaten Mads Pedersen on stage 3, even though he was visibly riding on a limit. Zonneveld notices this is becoming a bad trend at Grand Tours.

"Teams think: our chance will come," Zonneveled says at the latest episode of In De Waaier. "But towards the end of such a tour, the pressure increases and then there are teams that have not won anything yet. Then suddenly everyone has to go along and then you get those races where it is a three-hour attack, after which the strongest still ride away, because it is so hard."

"A day like stage 3 was a huge opportunity for escapees, if you keep attacking long enough and if you really want to go. However, only a few were interested," Zonneveld sighed. "10.5 kilometres at 7.4 percent, a really tough mountain. If a team starts riding seriously at the front from the bottom and increases the pace, then you force a selection."

Zonneveld saw this happen briefly near the top, but it goes to say that Mads Pedersen's teammates reacted switfly to that one attempt. "Just look at what happened when Pidcock pushed through at 80 or 90 percent, 800 metres from the top... Pedersen immediately dropped 30 positions, but nobody tried."

One of the teams that held the trump cards was Astana who are racing without a GC leader. "Why doesn't Astana put Wout Poels in front, with Diego Ulissi on his wheel? Then you ride Pedersen off and you are left with 20 or 30 men."

But instead, they opted for an attack with Lorenzo Fortunato who seems to be hunting the KOM classification: "They send two small climbers ahead, but that doesn't make sense."

At the end of the day, Zonneveled is scratching his head trying to figure why so many teams settled to sprint against Pedersen, instead of forcing a more favourable scenario: "Astana ninth and twelfth, Decathlon seventh, Bahrain fifth... If you do it for those kinds of results... If you don't make anything of it, nothing happens. And then complain after three weeks that big teams don't leave anything for them. I find that incomprehensible."