In a 9th stage of Tour de France which had nothing of a suspense race, however, Mathieu van der Poel and his teammate Jonas Rickaert (Alpecin-Deceuninck) almost tried the sprinters. Leaving from the start in the breakaway, first to seek the points of the intermediate sprint, the two runners of the training Alpecin-DECEUNINCKwere taken up in the final of the stage which finally crowned a sprinter. For having animated this transition step, Rickshert was given the price of combativeness, “A dream” For the Flemish runner, accustomed to being a teammate for his sprinters.
Video – Jonas Rickaert when this 9th stage arrives
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“I said yesterday that my dream was to be on the podium of the Tour”
This is the story of a joke that has not made the teams of sprinters laugh. However, the source of the maneuver of the two runners of the Alpecin-DECEUNINCK is there, in a joke of Jonas Rickaert : “I do not know what was the plan today, I made a joke yesterday but Mathieu seemed serious … I went there and Mathieu Van der Poel arrived … I think that the team had decided to go to the sprint, but the plan was simply to go to the end and we almost succeeded. I am not really surprised that we were left more than four minutes, because we were going strong enough. To do everything I could to help him until the end, but 30 kilometers of arrival, I told him that I was empty.
But this joke almost became reality since Mathieu van der Poel was taken up after the red flame. Sufficient in any case to animate a stage of dreary plain, and to realize the dream of Jonas Rickaert : “The peloton came back to 40 seconds, so we thought it was over. We went back to 1 minute and 20 seconds, so we said it was perhaps possible, but in the end, it is difficult against a peloton of sprinters. It is quite special to be on the podium. Yesterday, I told Christophe Roodhooft that my dream was to be on the podium of the Tour de France. The team for letting me go instead of staying with Kaden. “
