Beaten by barely a gut on the line of the Amstel Gold Race where he was first announced as the winner, Benoît Cosnefroy is inseparable from the Pole Michal Kwiatkowski, his executioner on April 10, 2022. And we forget that “Mathieu ( Van der Poel) was there. The Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale puncher reminds us that his frustrating second place was, in hindsight, an achievement ahead of the Dutchman, fourth that day.
“The circumstances made it possible,” explains the winner of the Flèche Brabançonne this Wednesday. When Mathieu is in a race, he is watched a lot and it is perhaps easier for a runner next to him to express himself. »
This will be the case again on Sunday in the first of the three Ardennes classics, where the world champion, unplayable since the start of the season, arrives with the status of indisputable favorite.
The moment to take on another dimension
Nothing to dampen Cosnefroy, more confident than ever after this success at the Flèche Brabançonne: “In Paris-Roubaix, Van der Poel has an exceptional team (Alpecin-Deceuninck) who did a good part of the work for him. But it is a very flat race, while the Amstel is a little less easy to master, it is perhaps more difficult to make big gaps too. I don’t really know, in my head I tell myself it’s possible. »
If its sports director, Nicolas Guillé, prefers “not to get excited and first savor the victory”, he does not play it defeatist before the departure for Maastricht (Netherlands). “It’s still a race. And we will find a lot of runners who were there today (Wednesday). » As on the Flèche Wallonne, next Wednesday, then Liège-Bastogne-Liège, on April 21, two additional opportunities for Cosnefroy to take on another dimension.
