Mathieu van der Poel beautifully conquered the overall victory in the BinckBank Tour on Saturday. The 25-year-old from Brabant came first in the final stage after an impressive solo of 50 kilometers on top of the Muur van Geraardsbergen and narrowly kept the competition behind him.
Mathieu van der Poel beautifully conquered the overall victory in the BinckBank Tour on Saturday. The 25-year-old from Brabant came first in the final stage after an impressive solo of 50 kilometers on top of the Muur van Geraardsbergen and narrowly kept the competition behind him.
In the final, Van der Poel, who had already gained nine bonus seconds along the way, seemed to be grabbed by his competitor Søren Kragh Andersen, but the reigning Dutch champion on the road just stayed ahead of the Dane and took the coveted ten bonus seconds on the finish line, making the overall victory was in.
Van der Poel started the final stage with a gap of seventeen seconds on classification leader Mads Pedersen, which, with four passes of the iconic Muur van Geraardsbergen, is the traditional executioner of the Dutch-Belgian stage race.
For Van der Poel, the overall victory in the BinckBank Tour is his fourth victory of the season. Earlier this year he won a stage in the Italian stage race Tirreno-Adriatico and became Dutch champion on the road.
For the users of the app: tap on the video to see the last kilometer of the final stage.
Van der Poel breaks away at 70 kilometers from the finish
The final stage of the BinckBank Tour took the peloton 185 kilometers from Ottignies-Louvain-la-Neuve to Geraardsbergen in Belgium. Only after more than 60 kilometers there was a first breakaway of seven riders, but they did not get more than two minutes from the large group.
At the first passage of the Muur van Geraardsbergen, known from the Tour of Flanders, Van der Poel jumped out of the peloton with a mighty attack. He was with the seven leaders within ten minutes, after which he went solo 50 kilometers from the finish.
Van der Poel immediately took a lead of one and a half minutes on the peloton, but in the final the fireworks in the group ignited and three chasers remained, including Kragh Andersen, the number two in the general classification. Classification leader Pedersen could not keep up with the pace.
Sunweb rider Kragh Andersen did everything he could to catch up with Van der Poel, because the rider from Brabant had accumulated many bonus seconds along the way. He just failed to catch up with him. In the end, Van der Poel only had a few seconds left. The stage was completed by Stefan Küng (Groupama-FDJ).
Earlier this week, the BinckBank Tour had to cancel the two stages through the Netherlands, because the mayors had revoked the permits due to the tightened corona measures. The riders therefore celebrated a rest day on Wednesday.
