Three men try to chase an angry cheetah.
The cheetah is a beast and fast and fearless.
Belgian’s Wout van Aert, Tadej Pogačar (Slovenia) and Mads Pedersen (Denmark) watch Mathieu van der Poel (the Netherlands) explode up a climb with 22 kilometers to go. Cheetah gone, rainbow jersey out of reach.
The man is an animal. He looks bigger and stronger than everyone else in the peloton. He radiates force and power and when he’s in top form, rivals start thinking that second place is a real triumph.
Once Van der Poel broke away, they’d never see him again. They couldn’t stop him, the pelting rain and wet roads couldn’t stop him. Not even four protesters gluing themselves to the road could stop him. Not even a nearly disastrous crash could prevent him from winning. He slid across the road into the metal barriers, ripping his jersey and bib shorts and damaging one of his shoes.
Van der Poel jumped back on his Canyon bike with blood streaming from his right knee, elbow and hip. Didn’t matter. If anything the crash poured more gasoline on his fire. The gap expanded — 12 seconds, then 20, then 35, a minute and a half to almost two minutes at the finish.
The flesh-colored jersey of The Netherlands only seemed to magnify Van der Poel’s muscular build and strength, a superhero character come to life. Despite a concerted effort by Van Aert, Pogacar and Pedersen, they all admitted that when Van der Poel attacked they were helpless. Van Aert was on his wheel and in a violent flash he wasn’t.
“Then when I went away, I didn’t expect to have a gap immediately but when I saw nobody was following, it gave me wings,” said Van der Poel. “I was just flying around the course until that crash.”
Watching Van der Poel attack every corner, it looked like he was prepared to take big risks to win. But as a cycle-cross World Champion, his idea of dangerous isn’t yours or mine. “I was not taking risks, not at all actually. In that corner, all of a sudden I was on the ground. I was pretty pissed at myself but it’s not that I was taking risks in my opinion.”
Van Aert said he didn’t make any mistakes and rode a tactically perfect race to take the silver medal. Tadej Pogacar was at the front of the action most of the day and just beat Pedersen in the sprint for bronze. And Pedersen, a former World Road RaceChampion himself, did everything he possibly could to win a second rainbow jersey. Unfortunately for all three men, they were dealing with an unstoppable force of nature.
As Van der Poel rightly noted, his victory was sweet revenge for what happened the night before last year’s World Championship Road Race. Two teenage girls continually knocked on his hotel room door, preventing him from getting any sleep. Police arrived and he was hit with an assault charge that was later dismissed.
This year Van der Poel got plenty of sleep and you see what happens when he’s bursting with energy — a rainbow jersey. “It means everything. It was one of the biggest goals I had left, and to win it today is amazing,” he said. “It completes my career in my opinion. For me, it’s the biggest victory on the road. I cannot yet imagine wearing the rainbow for a year.”
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