1/6 Dylan Groenewegen (center) during Days after the Tour (photo: Sem van der Wal/ANP).
Mathieu van der Poel won the day after the Tour in Boxmeer on Monday evening. The cyclist, who left the Tour de France prematurely, was the fastest in a final sprint with two fellow refugees.
With his victory, the Alpecin-Deceuninck rider followed in the footsteps of father Adrie van der Poel, who has been on the list of winners of the first criterion after the Tour de France for some time. Danny van Poppel wanted to do the same trick (father Jean-Paul was also the fastest in Boxmeer once), but he didn’t succeed. The BORA-hansgrohe rider came in second, just ahead of Pascal Eenkhoorn (Jumbo-Visma).
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Mathieu van der Poel did not want to comment in advance about the winning chances. However, he acknowledged that he was perhaps the most equipped participant. “I only took the bike for the first time the day before yesterday. It would be something if I wasn’t sufficiently rested.”
“Something went wrong during the altitude internship.”
He did enjoy riding in Boxmeer and it is not for nothing that he promised to participate in more criteriums. “I like the atmosphere of these kinds of races, it’s always special, but also the competition. Lots of intervals, acceleration, holding back, intensive: I see it as an addition to my training.”
In any case, he likes it better, he told our reporter, than the altitude training he completed between the Giro and the Tour de France. “Something went wrong there, it was possibly too burdensome,” said Van der Poel, who had to pay the toll for this during the Tour de France.
“I can still feel the Tour in my legs.”
Hardly recovered from the fatigues in the Tour, Danny van Poppel boarded the train to Boxmeer this afternoon. “Nice and relaxed.” For him there was an extra reason to look forward to the race. His father Jean-Paul once won there. “Oh, is that so? It will be difficult enough. I can still feel the Tour in my legs.”
Just over 24 hours after the final stage of the Tour de France, Danny van Poppel was at the start of the Ronde van Boxmeer. “I am very happy to be here, that this is possible again after the corona time,” says the cyclist from Moergestel. “I am also pleased that it is organized so well here that the public can hardly come to us. Corona is not gone and the season is not over yet,” he added.
The driver, who turns 29 on Tuesday, looks back on the Grande Boucle with reasonable satisfaction. “I was able to sprint for the stage win several times, was also close a few times, but unfortunately didn’t win anything. Of course I hoped to be able to win, but guys like Fabio Jakobsen and Dylan Groenewegen are so terribly fast.”
“It’s good that I finished in the top five with my team, that makes me happy. I may not have won a stage: the Tour remains something special.”
“As a child I dreamed of one day being able to ride a bicycle.”
Day after the Tour also means something special for the BORA-hansgrohe rider. “This race will stay in my mind as a race I was always on as a kid. And then I also wanted to be one of those riders who could participate here in Boxmeer after the Tour de France. So separate. I like to ride here, also because I know that children today dream of being able to cycle here in about fifteen years.”
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