WORLDTOUR

Mathieu van der Poel conquered the 2023 UCI World Championship and wrote a new page in the history of the cycling thanks to an epic and spectacular win on the Scotland roads.

The Dutchman crossed first the finish line after more than 6 hours and 270 kms, from Edinburgh to Glasgow, ahead of the Belgian Wout van Aert, Slovenia Tadej Pogacar and Danish Mads Pedersen. The 28-year-old Alpecin-Deceuninck captain attacked the group of riders in the last 25 kms and held on to his time advantage despite a crash 16 kms before the finish line.

After the race, van der Poel said that he was “overwhelmed” by the victory.  “It means everything,” the Dutchman said of his title. “It was one of the biggest goals I had left and to win it today was amazing. It almost completes my career, in my opinion. It’s maybe my biggest victory on the road.”

It was a remarkable win for Van der Poel, who had been targeting the rainbow jersey for several years. He is the first Dutch to conquer the rainbow jersey in almost 40 years, and the first cyclocross world champion to also win the road world championships on the same year.

Over the next 11 days, eight FENIX-Deceuninck riders will represent their countries in the World Cycling Championships that are taking place in Glasgow, Scotland.

Maria Martins (Portugal) will compete in the Women Elite’s scratch and omnium events, while Laura Süßemilch (German) will focus on the team pursuit.

Julie de Wilde (Belgium) and Christina Schweinberger (Austria) will first race the individual time trial on August 10^th, followed by the road championship, which will take place on August 13^th. Here they will be joined by Marthe Truyen (Belgium), Sanne Cant (Belgium), Julie van de Velde (Belgium) and Carina Schrempf (Austria).

In bocca al lupo to all the riders!

Stage 4 of the Tour de France Femmes is one for history books. With 177,1 km from Cahors to Rodez, it was the longest race since the creation of the Women World Tour in 2016 and Yara Kastelijn won it solo after attacking on breakaway, in which she spent most of the day.

It was also the Dutch cyclocross specialist’s first professional road victory, and the first Grand Tour win for FENIX-Deceuninck. “It’s really a dream. I can’t believe this – it is really a team victory because I had to do nothing all day… A victory is what we want and we have it now – and I’m super proud of this,” said Kastelijn in the post-race interview.

Kastelijn and teammate Marthe Truyen joined other 12 riders in first breakaway, which formed 15 km from the start. In the final climb, she attacked solo managing to cross the finish line a minute and eleven seconds ahead of the chasing pack. The Fenix-Deceuninck is now seventh in the general classification and second in the mountain ranking.

FENIX-Deceuninck is returning to the Italian roads, this time for its first ever Giro Donne where it will be racing in its iconic Verde Comodoro jersey.

As the proud naming sponsor, we are excited to present the seven riders who will be taking part in the first Grand Tour of the season, starting on Friday June 30th in Chianciano and finishing on Sunday July 9 in Olbia.

On Wednesday, the stage five of Giro d’Italia offered thrilling moments. The rain-soaked course from Atripalda to Salerno, in South Italy, caused a series of crashes, including that of world champion Remco Evenepoel sparked by a dog. Mark Cavendish also fell on the ground and injured a knee, but apparently anything got broken. A 171 km chaotic spectacle which ended with the solo victory of the Alpecin-Deceuninck rider Kaden Groves. After achieving two third place during the previous stages, he crashed too this time, but that didn’t prevent him to reach the golden podium.

“It’s a dream to win. Everything was going well but then I crashed at the roundabout with seven kilometres to go. Luckily, I put my chain back on fast enough and the group came back together but it wasn’t very clean, we all got lost. The guys did a good job earlier and then luckily I was good enough to be in position and had the legs to lead out and win,” the Australian winner commented.

“I had one of my best days on the bike,” said Mathieu van der Poel. After a solo attack, the Alpecin-Deceuninck team leader proudly raised up the iconic cobble stone at Parigi-Roubaix on Sunday. Collecting the 4^th Monument’s trophy of his career, Van der Poel also took over the early lead-out of his teammate Jasper Philipsen. The latter stood up on the podium with the second place.

“I think I’ve done my best Classics season ever and to finish it off like this is a dream. It’s incredible how we rode as a team, with Jasper finishing second. It’s not possible to do better than this,” said Van der Poel.

Philipsen added: “We wouldn’t have dared to dream this, but it will stay with me for a long time. We can be very satisfied with the team. We are proud of ourselves. Everything had to fall into place and today it was for us. That is very beautiful”.

On Saturday, the 3rd edition of Paris-Roubaix Femmes avec Zwift beautifully surprised the audience with an unexpected podium line-up. A thrilling outsprint brought the Canadian rider Alison Jackson to victory, while FENIX-Deceuninck Marthe Truyen conquered the Roubaix Velodrome by reaching the third place.

“I’m really happy,” Truyen claimed. “I come from cyclo-cross, I really like riding the cobbles. Paris-Roubaix has been my dream race since I was a kid. I was not scheduled for this race, I had Covid but it was a light fever, not too heavy. Once I started feeling good again for training, I started dreaming of coming here”.

The Belgian cyclist continued: “I was happy it was my task to go in the breakaway. I thought a group of 20 or 30 riders would catch us, and we could compete for the win with them. I had teammates, so it was a perfect situation. And then, in the last kilometres, I looked behind and it was still 5, 6 or 7 seconds, and it was technical, so it was not easy for a group to come back. And I realised we would sprint for victory.”

62 years later his grandfather’s golden podium in Milan-San Remo, Mathieu van der Poel signed an important chapter in the history of cycling. On Sunday, the Dutch rider achieved a solo victory in the same race, also smashing 1995 Poggio climbing time record.

This crucial win came after his recent conquest of the cyclocross world title in Hoogerheide. Regarding Milan-San Remo, the Alpecin-Deceuninck champion proudly commented: “The easiest Monument to ride but it’s the most difficult one to win”.

After the fantastic spectacle of last Wednesday – where Jasper Philipsen sprinted to win Stage 3 thanks to van der Poel’s lead-out – yesterday the Belgian rider reached a second victory during the final. Also this time, the support of his Alpecin-Deceuninck teammate was decisive.

The overall race of Tirreno-Adriatico was won by Primoz Roglic, but with these two sprint victories Philipsen conquered the spotlight for next Saturday’s Milan-San Remo.

“We managed to be in a really good position thanks to all the motivation we had from the previous sprint stage – we knew we were able to do it again. The team and Mathieu again did an amazing job,” Philipsen said.