Dutch sprinter Arvid De Kleijn had to dig really deep to get through stage 3 of the Tour de France on Monday and only narrowly beat the time limit, but he said afterwards he had had a powerful source of inspiration to help him keep going and stay in the race for at least one more day.
Despite suffering badly in the heat and on the Pyrenean climbs on Monday, De Kleijn, 32, said thinking of his late father, who died earlier this year, helped spur him on.
"I was riding with my dad in mind, he died in February and I saw him suffer so much. This suffering is nothing compared to what I saw," De Kleijn said in comments released by his team on social media.
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Images on the same social media post showed how the former Milan-Turin and Paris-Nice stage winner finished last on the day and with the broom wagon looming behind him as he crossed the line at Les Angles.
He finished 41:26 down on stage winner Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) and just over seven minutes ahead of the time cut of 48:29.
De Kleijn was in the same group of ultra-delayed riders as another struggling sprinter, Arnaud De Lie (Lotto-Intermarché) who had to abandon around four kilometres from the finish line. De Kleijn, meanwhile, made it through, but only just.
He is making his debut in Grand Tour racing this July in the Tour, but as he told reporters as he sat exhausted on a pavement at the side of the road, it has been anything but an easy beginning to the race.
"My body didn't want to do it today. After the TTT, I just blocked, and my body doesn't want to push that much so you know it's going to be hard.
"I hoped to be in the sprinters' group and I just didn't make it and then the race kept on going, we were the whole time three minutes, five minutes, three minutes behind the sprinters' group, so we could never get there."
The situation grew even more serious when De Kleijn and the rest of the peloton hit the Cat.1 Coll de Toses mid-stage, the 9.4 kilometre ascent which was the first Pyrenean climb of the 2026 Tour de France, and the hardest the race has yet had to tackle.
"When the real climb started, we divided, we were just the four of us and we did our own pace until the line. I'm completely exhausted," De Kleijn said.
After drawing inspiration he needed from his family loss, the Dutchman said he will battle onwards on stage 4, set to be another super hot day and featuring nearly 3,000 metres of vertical climbing.
"I just need to keep on going and keep the pressure on the pedals, tomorrow [Tuesday] is going to be again suffering," De Kleijn said.
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