Glasgow, Aug 6 (AFP/APP): Dutch rider Mathieu van der Poel won the men’s road race world championship in Glasgow on Sunday with a late solo escape after a 271km run that began in Edinburgh and ended with ten circuits of Glasgow.
Belgian Wout van Aert was second with two-time Tour de France champion Tadej Pogacar of Slovenia in third in a race that was blocked for an hour by climate protestors who glued themselves to the road as the riders passed through remote countryside.
The 28-year-old Van der Poel was amongst the favourites after also winning the ultra-long Milan-San Remo (299km) and Paris-Roubaix (253km) this year.
Van der Poel survived a late fall on a rain-slick corner where he skidded into the barriers but picked himself up and finished with a broken shoe clasp.
He had dropped Van Aert, Pogacar and Mads Pedersen 20km from the line with a sudden attack, and cried on the ground with relief after the finish line.
He was the first Dutch winner since Joop Zoetemelk in 1985.
The win will also go some way to making up for the controversy of the 2022 championships in Australia where he had been the title favourite.
Instead of competing, he ended up under arrest and in a police cell after a confrontation with two teenage girls who he claimed had repeatedly knocked on his hotel door and ran away.
“The win felt like revenge for what happened last year, I was alone over those last kilometres and thought about it all,” he said.
“This was a big hole in my career and now I’ve filled it.”
Climbing the podium Pogacar quipped at Van der Poel “It was two laps too long,” in reference to where the winner had escaped.
But Van der Poel quipped back he’d have preferred two more laps.
Police arrested five protesters from the environmental group ‘This is Rigged’ who were demonstrating against cycling sponsor Ineos, a major producer of oil and gas-related products.
The peloton was stuck in the open countryside for 55 minutes as police removed the group who had glued themselves to the surface.
The race restarted with its conclusion played out in downtown Glasgow over ten laps, each of which took in 48 corners.
With national team buses parked all along the circuit riders had a regular option to retire, and any puncture or slight set back on the frantic closing laps meant a rider was dropped anyway.
Several high-profile contenders were caught out by the protruding feet of the crowd barriers including Matteo Trentin, the Italian who came second in Yorkshire in 2019.
Follow the PNI Facebook page for the latest news and updates.
