Van der Poel and van Aert ready to hunt stage into Carcassonne: "Being in the breakaway will be the most important thing today"

Stage 15 of the Tour de France is a hilly day and one in which most people agree that a breakaway is likely to succeed. The fatigue, the difficult and hard to control route and the dozens of top-tier riders aiming for a big win will make it a very hard day for anyone to control. Among those we can expect to see out front are Wout van Aert and Mathieu van der Poel who have shared their thoughts at the start of the stage.

"On paper, it looks like a stage for our team, and probably one for the breakaway as well," van der Poel said to VTM this morning. "Being in the breakaway will be the most important thing today, and I'm going to do everything I can to achieve that. But the rest of the peloton will want that too, so I expect another long battle for the breakaway today."

Jonas Vingegaard has said that Visma will be aiming for the win today and Wout van Aert in a breakaway would be the ideal scenario. "Today we’d like a break to fight for the win and we’ll trying getting a couple of guys there. It was always the plan that we would stage hunt with Wout". The Belgian himself confirmed in words to Het Laatste Nieuws: "It's a beautiful stage that I'm definitely aiming for."

Arnaud de Lie, who joined van Aert and van der Poel on the breakaway into Toulouse on stage 11, can certainly try to replicate his performance this Sunday: "I'm happy with the good feeling now; the beginning of the Tour wasn't easy. But now my legs are good, and I'm happy to still be in the Tour. Being in the breakaway again, like in the stage to Toulouse, would be great, but it won't be easy. You have to have a bit of luck and be smart to be in the breakaway at the right moment. It's going to be a tough stage with the final category-two climb, but maybe it's possible through the breakaway."