It is of course invariably their biggest competitor during the spring, and that will be no different on Sunday. However, Visma-Lease a Bike will not be able to fight Mathieu van der Poel with their best weapon.
READ ALSO. Team provides update on Van Aert: ‘He is still in a lot of pain’
Enormously strong
And then we are of course talking about Wout van Aert. The Dutch team will therefore have to come up with a different idea on how to beat the world champion. Making a clear analysis of the rider Van der Poel is part of this.
“We have to do that. He’s so good. To beat him we have to know him as well as possible,” said Merijn Zeeman in HLN. “You can see him trying to create scenarios where everyone is so broken that there is no organization or control anymore. We want to provide an answer to that.”
What they already know at Visma-Lease a Bike is that you should not always follow him blindly. “If you race against Van der Poel, it is also dangerous to get over your head. He drives so fast on the slopes. Most can do that once, he can do it many times in a row. Many riders die trying to follow him over and over again. We map out those kinds of things.”
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Not unbeatable
Van der Poel sometimes seems unbeatable, but he is of course only human. We saw that return again in Gent-Wevelgem, where he ultimately lost out to Lidl-Trek and Mads Pedersen. Zeeman also saw him make mistakes there.
“Van der Poel relies heavily on his intuition. You can’t say: he always races the same way. But of course there are cycling laws, including for him. In Ghent-Wevelgem he is chasing Milan, which cost him energy,” he said.
