GLASGOW: Mathieu van der Poel won the men’s road race world championship in Glasgow on Sunday with a late solo escape, hailing his victory as “revenge” for his controversial absence from the 2022 event.

At last year’s world championships in Australia, the Dutch rider was unable to compete after being arrested following a confrontation with two teenage girls who he claimed had repeatedly knocked on his hotel door and ran away.

Van der Poel pleaded guilty to common assault but then had his conviction and fine overturned on appeal.

“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.”

Belgian Wout van Aert was second, 1min 37sec behind, with two-time Tour de France champion Tadej Pogacar of Slovenia in third after a 271km race which started in Edinburgh.

The race was blocked for an hour by climate protestors who glued themselves to the road as the riders passed through remote countryside.

“It was one of the last goals on my list. It’s an incredible feeling, a little unreal too,” added the 28-year-old Dutchman.

“I felt really strong today. It was a crazy race but I worked hard for this title.”

Van der Poel was amongst the favourites after also winning the ultra-long Milan-San Remo (299km) and Paris-Roubaix (253km) this year.

He 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.

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 hit back, saying he’d have preferred two more laps.

“One of the hardest races of my career. The last 70 kilometres were pure suffering. In the end we were all dead, it was a zombie sprint with Mads,” admitted Pogacar who regretted that the climbs on the course were “too short” to make a difference.

Earlier, 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 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.

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.

Published in Dawn, August 8th, 2023