After failing to close down Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Premier Tech) by just a matter of metres in the final kilometre of E3 Saxo Classic, Florian Vermeersch (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) said he was disappointed but "not angry" that his chasing companions "chose to gamble" instead of helping him reel back in the Dutchman.
Having already been dealt bad luck before the crucial Kortekeer and Taaienberg climbs with a mechanical, Vermeersch almost produced a comeback for the ages as he fought his way back up the groups and eventually got into a three-man attack heading into the final 30km.
By this point, Van der Poel had already been alone for 33km, but, with a headwind hampering him and the chase never really stopping behind, he was well within striking distance just 58 seconds up the road from Vermeersch, Jonas Abrahamsen (Uno-X Mobility), Per Strand Hagenes (Visma-Lease a Bike) and Stan Dewulf (Decathlon CMA CGM), whom they'd mopped up from the early breakaway.
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Vermeersch and Hagenes did the lion's share of the work, making Van der Poel look human as his gap melted away to just 10 seconds for much of the final 5km. Bringing it down to three seconds for the final 1,000 metres, Vermeersch could almost reach out and touch the Alpecin-Premier Tech man. But he cast a look behind and received a lack of response, gifting Van der Poel the E3 hat-trick that so nearly went amiss. Between them, they'd thrown it away.
"I'm happy that we stayed up front, but it's not the best feeling, not winning. There was no cooperation anymore, and we didn't catch him," said Vermeersch to the TV broadcast after the race.
"I was asking for one more pull from my companions, but they decided they wanted to gamble. At that moment, I also said that I was not going to be the guy who was going to close the gap with my last effort.
"It's a pity in the end. It's not that I'm angry, it's cycling. Of course, I'm disappointed, but I also understand their tactical reasons – it's life. I showed everyone that I have a good shape. So I guess it's onto the next."
Speaking at the finish, the UAE Team Emirates-XRG rider defended his tactics in the run-in, saying he was right to stop the effort instead of towing the likes of Hagenes and Abrahamsen to an easy win ahead of Van der Poel. In the end, the Belgian took third behind the Norwegian Hagenes.
"He had already done more than the others; he was pushing and pulling more than them, but this is a race situation, and you need also to have a bit of killer instinct, to take some risk, to save some energy, to maybe win the race," Sports Director Fabio Baldato told Cyclingnews in Harelbeke.
"At one moment, Florian, he pulled, he pulled, and he pulled, from kilometre two to the last one. It was mostly him, and then for me, he did what was right to do.
"About the chasers, it is what it is. You take the risk to lose the race, to try to win, and even Florian at that moment, if he closed, he knew he could not win the race, that's just the way it is. Anyway, he was great, he's a champion."
It's unknown just how close Vermeersch would have been to the initial burst that Van der Poel made up the Taaienberg with Tim van Dijke (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe), but the legs he showed in the final 60km suggested he would have been mighty close to going with and possibly beating him.
Of course, he was left thinking about that very scenario, but didn't for a moment think it was a certainty. Either way, considering this is UAE without Tadej Pogačar, they are looking ominous for the upcoming Tour of Flanders on April 5.
"He did everything perfectly considering today, that he had this bad mechanical just before the Taaienberg," said Baldato. "For us, we were thinking that the race was done for him, so he did a fantastic job."
Vermeersch agreed it was a bad moment.
"It was the most terrible moment possible. I think I turned onto the Taaienberg in position 100, maybe even further. From there, I was just catching up, and catching up, but I came back pretty quickly thanks to my teammates. I'm a bit left with what if, but it is what it is."
The Belgian said he was "maybe even better" than at Omloop Nieuwsblad, where he was the second strongest behind Van der Poel and also finished third.
"If I see how I felt in the end after all the climbs and after such a hard race, maybe I had better legs – but I'm never gonna say that I would be able to follow and beat Mathieu."
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