Published March 22, 2021 09:13AM
Marked men: Wout van Aert, Mathieu van der Poel, and 'Peter Sagan syndrome'
Wout van Aert and Mathieu van der Poel may find themselves with targets on their backs this spring, just as Peter Sagan was during his prime.
Mathieu van der Poel will be one of the leading Tour de France rookies in 2021. (Photo: Getty Images)
Wout van Aert and Mathieu van der Poel are in many ways rebooted, modern versions of Peter Sagan. Multi-terrain skills. Attacking panache. Daredevil racecraft. Near-celebrity status.
Life couldn’t be better for the peloton’s two top dogs, right?
Not necessarily.
Van Aert and van der Poel may also share the curse that stalked the Slovak after he rose to prominence in the middle of the last decade – the curse of the marked man.
“You cannot look past the two phenomenons that we have in van der Poel and van Aert,” Deceuninck-Quick-Step director Tom Steels told VeloNews before Milano-Sanremo last week. “They are really strong, can climb and are fast, and can finish alone or in a sprint. The only weapon you have against them is the tactics, and the strength of the team.”
When the race shook out at the bottom of the Poggio at the denouement of Milano-Sanremo, the hulking presence of van der Poel and the No. 1 on van Aert’s will have been front-and-center of the minds of the 17-strong front group.
ADVERTISEMENT
What are they going to do? How do we counter?
While Jasper Stuyven didn’t wait for the pair to move, the rest of the bunch hesitated, braced for van Aert or van der Poel to launch a haymaker. Having been shadowed by half the peloton over the Poggio, defending champ van Aert didn’t want to burn his matches pulling the field in pursuit. As Stuyven vanished up the road, van Aert begrudgingly countered a flurry of moves in the panicking pack and dragged the field back toward the race leader, snuffing the spark in his legs that could have launched a sprint victory.
The Jumbo-Visma ace finished third, a disappointing end to his title defense. Who finished on his shoulder? An unmarked and under-the-radar Peter Sagan, taking the fifth Sanremo fourth-place of his career.
Rewind four years, and Sagan had suffered similar treatment to van Aert.
ADVERTISEMENT
After adding a second rainbow jersey, a Tour de France green jacket, and a European champion’s jersey to his brimming wardrobe the season prior, Sagan was red-hot favorite for the 2017 Sanremo. As a result, he was marked through each of the race’s 291km, stalked up and over the Poggio, and followed down the Via Roma by Julian Alaphilippe and Michał Kwiatkowski, with the latter taking the win.
“Kwiatkowski owes me a few beers,” Sagan uttered after his elbow-wagging end to the race.
Eight days later, Sagan was again leaned on, this time by Niki Terpstra at Gent-Wevelgem. Rather than co-operating in a joint chase of Greg van Avermaet and Jens Keukeleire, the Dutchman sat on the world champ’s wheel rather than risking towing him to the line before being out-sprinted to the podium.
Eight days later, Sagan was again leaned on, this time by Niki Terpstra at Gent-Wevelgem. Rather than co-operating in a joint chase of Greg van Avermaet and Jens Keukeleire, the Dutchman sat on the world champ’s wheel rather than risking towing him to the line before being out-sprinted to the podium.
The story repeated itself throughout much of the season as Sagan’s dominance over the classics backfired on him, leaving him suffocated out of races throughout the year.
Maybe offense is the best defense after all?
Saturday’s Sanremo was the second time Trek-Segafredo has taken the race to van Aert and van der Poel rather than waiting in their shadow.
Also read: Pedersen capitalizes on van Aert and van der Poel’s rivalry at Gent-Wevelgem
The heavy-hitters of the classics scene such as Deceuninck-Quick-Step, Ag2r-Citroën, and UAE-Emirates will have taken note of Stuyven’s willingness to gamble with his “all-or-nothing” attack. Rather than waiting in the wheels, the Belgian grabbed the race by the neck, and it worked.
ADVERTISEMENT
“Those three [Alaphilippe, van Aert, van der Poel] are the strongest riders in the world in virtually every kind of race, but I showed today that if you believe in it, you can achieve great things. And that they’re beatable,” Stuyven said Saturday. “Nobody is unbeatable. I think that’s the right mentality.”
The same story went for Sagan. After years of being followed and countered at his every pedal stroke, riders realized the Slovak wasn’t invincible and went on the attack. Vincenzo Nibali upset Sagan and the sprinters with a Poggio raid at the 2018 Milano-Sanremo, and a few weeks later, Terpstra this time went on the offense to win Tour of Flanders.
Just as team directors were at their drawing boards figuring about how to “not lose” to van Aert and van der Poel ahead of Sanremo, the two aces may now be left with the thinking to do; how to win when being marked, and how to win when the peloton realizes that offense is perhaps the best defense.