Lars van der Haar: "I was ridden off by Pidcock, so victory was not directly in the cards"

Despite his best efforts, Lars van der Haar lost the Superprestige Boom to Tom Pidcock. He was unable to catch Pidcock until the end and satisfied himself with silver.

"I played a bit of the bastard today," Van der Haar said in the post-race interview. He continues, "I did not take over from Eli and Michael, who was clearly riding for the classification. I was ridden off by Pidcock, so victory was not directly in the cards. That's why I saved my strength a bit and waited until that last lap."

Van der Haar battled with Iserbyt for the second position and he almost lost it due to a small mistake. "I made another mistake that made Eli come back on the last lap, which was stupid. But he didn't get back into his pedal at one point, which was lucky. I had the same problem, but I just kept pedalling. I thought: if I passed him, he has to pass me again first," said van der Haar.

He also witnessed Mathie van der Poel’s crash, "I was a bit shocked by the speed at which they left at the start, but you could see afterwards that Mathieu was also struggling a bit with the pace. I still had it in my head to ride back to it, but then suddenly, he was lying there on the ground. I hope he's OK," concluded van der Haar.