"Without earpieces, it is difficult racing" - Wout van Aert had no idea of Mathieu van der Poel's crash

The World Championships are an unique race throughout the same for a few reasons and one is the lack of radios for the riders. That may have changed the outcome of the men's Elite road race because Wout van Aert admits he had no idea of Mathieu van der Poel's crash and did not up the chase afterwards.

''I'm not super happy or anything because I wanted to be the world champion here. But I'm not too disappointed either because I rode a good race and didn't make any mistakes," van Aert said in a post-race interview, including In de Leiderstrui. "In the final, I felt Mathieu was the strongest, so I wanted to be on his wheel. That worked, but he dropped everyone in the end. Still, I had to make the best of it, so I was satisfied with my second place."

Whilst van Aert rode to a fourth silver medal without achieving gold at the Worlds in his road cycling career, he was left to wonder if there could've been more after the race. Van der Poel crashed shortly after his attack and had a broken shoe. Although he went on to then extend his gap, that was partially because the chasing group had no idea of the crash and slowed down the chasing as they began to fight for the medals.

"I only saw after the finish that Mathieu had fallen; we didn't know. We ride here without earpieces, which is very weird for me," the Belgian admits. "Mathieu was the strongest, and he immediately took a gap, but from then on, we had to compete without information for the second place. If we had heard he had fallen, it might have been different. Now we didn't ride anymore, so in that sense, it affected the race."

"Without earpieces, it is difficult racing. As professionals, we are normally always aware of the tactics and other situations. Actually, it's ridiculous; in a group of two hundred, we now have to go looking for our compatriots." This was further showed by the protest that took place earlier in the race, where the chasing group and peloton kept riding quite quickly all the way into the incident location as they were no aware.

As was the case in the cyclocross World Championships, van Aert finished second behind the Dutchman. He's asked how his palmarès would look like if van der Poel was not around. "Whether I've ever thought about what my palmares would look like without him? I don't want to think about that," he laughs. "Mathieu is a great talent, and he can focus on his moments very well, as he has shown again now. He is the deserved winner."