Few people could've built a more star-filled podium at the UCI Road World Championships than the Mathieu van der Poel–Wout van Aert–Tadej Pogačar combination that came to pass at the end of the 271km race in Glasgow on Sunday.
The biggest names in the road cycling world came together on the challenging hilly city circuit to round out the six-hour race, with Dutchman Van der Poel chalking up another score in the eternal battle with long-time rival Van Aert.
The Belgian was second best on the rain-soaked day, soloing home at 1:37 down on Van der Poel, though said later on that he was neither "super happy" nor "really disappointed" with his result.
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Van Aert, who now has three silver medals at the road Worlds across the time trial and road race, to go with his three rainbow jerseys in cyclocross, said that he and his Belgian squad hadn't made any major mistakes during the race.
"I think I'm not super happy or something because my goal was to come here and win the race," Van Aert said in the post-race press conference. "On the other hand, I'm not really disappointed because I felt that I did a good race. I didn't make mistakes and I had a super strong team around me to support me.
"I was in the final split and I thought that Mathieu was the strongest of the group. I really wanted to be on his wheel when he attacked, which I did, but it was still not enough. He dropped everyone including myself. You have to accept it and try to make the best of it behind him so in that case I was happy to still take a second place."
Van Aert, who said that the race was "even harder than I expected", said that he and his team could have realistically done little differently on the day, even if they didn't come away with the coveted rainbow jersey.
In the end, despite not managing to match Van der Poel when his rival made the winning move on a hill at 22km to go, he still left behind Pogačar and Mads Pedersen 7km from the line.
"I think I was always really well positioned," he said later. "I wanted to be in the moves early on because I knew coming back is really hard on this course.
"I have the feeling I did that really well and my teammates supported me super good in the positioning and covering other than moves. So, I was there when I needed to be, but Mathieu was stronger when he attacked."
Of course, after a day which saw Belgium with four men in the select lead group of favourites heading into the final 50km, Van Aert had little to criticise his teammates about. The lack of race radios – a staple at the World Championships in contrast to the rest of the road calendar – and the much-criticised course itself did draw some complaints.
"I saw [Van der Poel's crash] immediately after the finish. We didn't know because we don't have communication and that's strange to me," Van Aert said. "He showed he was the strongest and after his attack, I think the three of us regret him taking a nice gap immediately.
"From then on if you don't have info you race for second place because he's in front. It may be different if you hear on the radio that he crashed because we didn't ride anymore for the whole part since he attacked. So it really influenced the race. But on the other hand, he was the strongest and maybe it's a good thing that it didn't [affect] the race like that so he still won.
"I'm happy that we were there with favourites in the final and it was an honest battle. But through the race, it was very difficult to race without because we're professionals and we're used to course information and it's not possible to talk to your teammates."
The course, and more specifically the very technical city circuit in Glasgow, has come in for criticism from various riders in the lead-up to Sunday. Van Aert accepted that the design of the circuit only amplified the negatives for those riders hit by bad luck.
"I understand the critics but I think it'd good that every year the World Championships has a different course so a lot of riders have opportunities in their career," he said. "For me, the only problem was the fact that if there's a crash or bad luck then it really influences the race and you don't have a chance to get back anymore.
"With a few corners less or a few parts where you can at least organise, you will still have a punchy circuit with a city atmosphere but with more chances to chase. This could have been a better dynamic. A little change could have done a lot."
