After the dust had settled on Mathieu van der Poel’s dominant Omloop het Nieuwsblad victory last weekend, many looked at whether his race rivals could’ve done more to thwart the Dutchman from adding the Belgian Classic to his already vast palmarès.
Our Spring Classics columnist and nine-time Monument winner, Sean Kelly, was one of those voices, urging eventual runner-up Florian Vermeersch (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) to have played it differently with the Alpecin-Premier Tech leader in the final stages of Saturday’s race.
“I was watching it, wondering, ‘Why is he riding that strongly with him?’ He was too generous, in my eyes,” Kelly recalled.
He went on to cite Tiesj Benoot’s recent comments about the formula for beating the likes of Tadej Pogačar and Van der Poel this spring, which starts with refusing to collaborate with them when the race begins to splinter.
“[The sports director] can give you that word in your ear to say okay, just take it easy, if you’re doing turns just do a very short turn, leave Mathieu to do the bulk of the work, maybe skip a turn here and there, and see if you can get over the Muur with him.'”
“If you put [Van der Poel] under pressure, and he has to ride, and it’s suspense right to the very end […] his market value would be a good bit higher than it is right now.”