When Jasper Philipsen abandoned the Tour de France, his Alpecin-Deceuninck squad was left with the tricky decision of how to approach the flat stages moving forward. Would the team shift its focus to Mathieu van der Poel and the possibility of a green jersey? Or would Alpecin back Australian speedster Kaden Groves?
After shutting down any suggestions of the first option and trying the second on Saturday without success, the Belgian team decided to invent a third option altogether on Sunday. Van der Poel and teammate Jonas Rickaert spent most of the day out front in pursuit of a breakaway win on a stage 9 without a single categorized climb in the profile.
It almost worked.
Van der Poel made it under the flamme rouge before a hard-charging peloton caught him to set up a sprint won by Tim Merlier (Soudal-Quick-Step).
"We were talking about it because also yesterday, we saw the two guys from Total[Energies] and then in the end, at least they tried something, and they did something," Alpecin co-leader Philip Roodhooft said after stage 9. "Also they knew in advance that it was almost surely impossible, but at least they tried. They also did a nice pace during the one hour that they were in the front.
"It's nice trying to do something that it's not on paper or in a plan, it has this value, and especially here in the Tour. With a bit more luck, we probably could have brought it to a good end. So it was more than worth trying."
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