Van der Poel had spent the week saying he could not win in Montreal. Then he rode 174 kilometres alone in Luxembourg.

The Alpecin-Premier Tech rider went clear after just three kilometres of stage 5 of the Skoda Tour de Luxembourg on Sunday and stayed away all the way to the finish. It was his eighth win of the season and the longest winning solo in men’s professional road racing since 2000. David McKenzie’s 164-kilometre breakaway on stage 7 of the 2000 Giro d’Italia had held the mark for a quarter of a century.

Mikkel Frølich Honoré of EF Education-EasyPost came home 1:04 down. Davide Piganzoli of Visma-Lease a Bike finished fourth on the stage and took the overall win.

‘It wasn’t the plan’

Van der Poel insisted afterwards that none of it was designed.

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“I have no idea. It wasn’t the plan before the start. I just found myself alone right at the beginning of the race, and I simply rode at my own tempo all day,” he said.

“At first I thought the chasers were going to come back. But I just kept riding at my own power, and then the gap started growing again.”

His verdict on the day was short.

“I had incredible legs today.”

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He had trained at altitude in Spain and arrived in Luxembourg feeling flat.

“The last few days, they weren’t really the legs I wanted. I came from Spain and maybe I trained a little too much. But today I felt really good.”

‘A little too difficult for me’

The awkward part is what he said the day before.

“I think the race is just a little too difficult for me,” Van der Poel told Dutch broadcaster NOS before the start of the Luxembourg stage, pointing to a Montreal course that had already favoured pure climbers at the recent Grand Prix de Montréal.

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Tadej Pogacar’s decision to skip Canada did not change his reading.

“That does not change much for me. I still think it will be just a little too difficult.”

12 laps of Mount Royal await

The elite men’s road race starts in Brossard on Sunday 27 September at 9am local time, with 273.7 kilometres and 3,803 metres of climbing built around 12 laps of the Mount Royal circuit in Montreal.

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