'We put on a good show' - Mathieu van der Poel falls metres short of epic Tour de France win on stage nine

It was, in theory, a day for Mathieu van der Poel to take it easy. Already at this year’s Tour de France he had won a stage, placed second on another, and worn the yellow jersey twice. The week – his entire race, in fact – was a thumping success. Stage nine, then, a flat romp to Châteauroux, would bring a welcome chance for the Dutchman to catch his breath.

Except this is Mathieu van der Poel, a man who lives to go long range. When the flag dropped in Chinon on Sunday, the Alpecin-Deceuninck rider dropped the peloton. He’d end up spending 173 of the stage's 174 kilometres off the front, most of them in tandem with his team-mate Jonas Rickaert, before his hopes were swallowed whole.

Inside 700m to go, the mass of the bunch mopped the Dutchman up. Script restored, Tim Merlier won the sprint, his second victory of the race. Van der Poel trickled over the line in 68th.

“It’s hard to not be able to finish it off, but I think we put on a good show today,” he told the TV cameras afterwards, grimacing and stretching out his back. “We suffered, but also enjoyed today, I think.”

The mood at the Alpecin-Deceuninck bus was surprisingly downbeat beyond the finish line. Yes, their riders had lit up the stage – the only team to try and do so – but with victory so close, there was a sense of what iffery. On his return, sports director Christoph Roodhoft sat in the driver's seat of the team car for a few minutes, contemplating the day, before stepping out to face the press.

“Performance wise, it was amazing of course to see,” Roodhoft said. “But afterwards you always think it’s also disappointment.”

Had a breakaway ambush been the plan all along? “We were talking about it,” Roodhoft said. “Yesterday we saw the two guys from Total[Energies] and, in the end, at least they tried something and they did something. They knew in advance that it was almost, or for sure, impossible what they did, but at least they tried.

“Trying to do something that is not on paper or in the plan has its value, and especially here in the Tour. With a bit more luck, probably we could have brought it to a good end. It was more than worth trying.”

Parked down a long highway, Alpecin’s bus was one of the furthest from the finish line, a cruel commute for their riders after racing at more than 50kph. Silvan Dillier was among the first to return, and spoke in a deflated tone.

“They wanted to go far, and they weren’t missing a lot to win,” Dillier said of his breakaway team-mates. When the sprint trains began to chase hard, barreling towards Châteauroux, Dillier snuck his way to the front. Was he trying to disrupt them? “Well, yes,” he said, his frankness worthy of a chuckle among the reporters. “We didn’t want to make their job too easy, did we?”

The difference, in the end, was 700m – less than a minute of racing.

“You always hope,” said Roodhoft, “but you also know that it’s almost not realistic… We didn’t win, but we did something.”

Rickaert was awarded the day’s combativity award – “his dream is to be on the Tour de France podium,” said Van der Poel, “so I’m happy to help him.” Both, for their efforts, were spared the extra kilometre’s ride back to the bus, picked up instead at the finish, and driven back to the hotel.

For the past few weeks, the road into Châteauroux has been decorated with ‘Cavendish City’ signs, an homage to the sprinter who won all three previous finishes there. Van der Poel believed it might be him to break that streak. “We came really close,” he said. Instead, the sprinters had their day again.