No-one could believe what had just happened. Not Visma-Lease a Bike’s Matteo Jorgenson, the defending champion, who finished fourth. Not Visma-Lease a Bike’s Tiesj Benoot, who finished third. Not Visma-Lease a Bike’s Wout van Aert, the Wout van Aert, who finished second. Especially not EF Education-EasyPost’s Neilson Powless, who finished first.
From a final group of four at Dwars door Vlaanderen on Wednesday, three in the yellow of Visma-Lease a Bike, Powless in pink somehow won. The slumped heads of Benoot, Jorgenson and Van Aert said it all as they crossed the line.
No-one could blame them, really, for not understanding what had happened. After 184.2km of hard racing, in which the race-winning move had been set up around 80km from finish by Visma-Lease a Bike, who would have bet against the men in yellow? Van Aert was there, a man who has won bunch sprints of almost every kind, as well as Classics before. However, something weird happened when the Belgian opened up his sprint in Waregem. He just couldn't get up to speed. Powless, sprinting for his life, could, coming around Van Aert and into cycling immortality.
In his post-victory interview on TV, Powless had to catch himself as he recounted the finalé - “I knew Wout, I thought Wout would be the strongest in the sprint”. He was right, we all knew Van Aert would be the strongest there. It turns out we were wrong, everyone was wrong.
Forget everything you know - Neilson Powless can beat Wout van Aert in a sprint, three vs one doesn’t end in triumph for one of the three. It still doesn’t feel real, but those results are real. It happened. It wasn’t a confidence-boosting win for Wout ahead of the Tour of Flanders, it was the biggest victory of Powless’ career, just EF’s second of the year.
How had Visma allowed this to happen? It wasn’t a carbon copy of Ian Stannard’s improbable victory against three Quick-Step riders at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad in 2015, but it was like a tribute show. The four were alone from 55km to go, and that should have been it, with Powless dispatched. It should be said that the final straight came after a tight corner, with the difficulty that that brings, but it was still a result no-one expected.
Post-race, Jorgenson was open about the horror for his team: “We did a beautiful race up until 10km to go. We decided to go for the sprint with Wout, and it was the wrong decision. We can be honest about that, we also underestimated Neilson. Chapeau to him and congrats. That was a great sprint from him."
“I wouldn’t say it was so much of a surprise,” he continued, although it was, for everyone. “I know Neilson, I know how fast he is. [He’s] super explosive, and Wout, and also [those] in the car, decided to go for the sprint instead of attack, and this is a decision we made because we weren’t comfortable with the gap we had at a certain point and we made the wrong decision.”
Powless was there to be attacked, something obvious in hindsight, but also obvious at the time - the risk came from keeping Powless there, from gambling on the sprint.
"It's going to take me a while to see the positive side of this,” Van Aert told Wielerflits. “If you don't win with three men in a group of four, you always make a mistake. I said I wanted to go for the sprint, so now I have to take responsibility and be hard on myself.
"It's not the team management's fault. I was so convinced of my sprint that they went along with my story. I was too selfish. After all the criticism and bad luck of the past months, I thought about myself. It's a huge mistake. This is not who I am and I'm very disappointed in myself."
Up until the embarrassment of the finish, which will be the only thing remembered from this race, Visma-Lease a Bike had ridden a dream race. Setting the pace and getting three of their riders clear on the Berg Ten Houte so far from the finish could not have gone better, but the finish was not there. That will be the worry going into the Tour of Flanders on Sunday, where Tadej Pogačar and Mathieu van der Poel will return to the action. Not that their team isn’t strong, or capable of having an impact on these races, but that Van Aert seems incapable of finishing races off at the moment.
The disbelief of Wednesday will not create belief for Sunday, or a week after at Paris-Roubaix. That’s the true cost of this defeat. They can claim the plan worked, but with this result, it couldn't have. The men in yellow will have to hope things come good for them at the Tour of Flanders, or it will be another difficult post-mortem.
