In the biggest win of his career and one of the races of the season, Mattias Skjelmose (Lidl-Trek) played the perfect hand to defeat both Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep) and Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) at a thrilling Amstel Gold Race, outsprinting both the Olympic and world champion to the line on Sunday.
Evenepoel led out and opened up the sprint just outside Valkenberg, with Pogačar poised in his wheel. The rainbow jersey came around him as Evenepoel was forced to sit down and accept defeat; however, the Dane emerged from Pogačar’s slipstream to shock everyone.
Pogačar looked set to ride into the distance from the peloton when he launched away solo from Julian Alaphilippe (Tudor) and the whole field on the Kruisberg, after the pair had scorched away from the group of favourites one climb earlier up the Gulperberg with 47km to go.
However, the world champion showed signs that he is, in fact, human, with his gap barely extending further than 30 seconds as it tends to do when he goes alone. Behind, Evenepoel led the chase, exploding into life away from an uncooperative group with 25 kilometres to go.
The Olympic champion caught Skjelmose, who had also gone solo to try and chase Pogačar. Evenepoel did the lion’s share of the work in the final run for home, and incredibly, with 8km to ride, the 30-second lead had disappeared, and the catch was made.
However, with Skjelmose able to keep his powder dry as Evenepoel did most of the chasing, the Dane managed to save just enough for the exhilarating three-up sprint final, producing a true David and Goliath performance in the face of two of modern cycling’s great champions.
Asked if he could believe what he’d done, Skjelmose said, “No, I really don’t. I was telling Remco all the time that I was fucked and ‘Please, pull on the climbs, I’m on the limit’, and when we stopped, I only took pulls because I was riding for the podium,” said Skjelmose in his winner’s interview.
“Already, that would have been a really big result for me. I tried to keep the group going so they didn’t come back from behind. Of course, I sprinted for the best result, but I thought I was going to cramp and see them go into the horizon.”
Skjelmose couldn’t quite remember what happened in the final charge for the line, clearly in shock at what he’d just achieved.
“I think Remco did it perfect, I tried to have a big of a gap and go on the right, but Remco went right and fuck, Tadej went on the right as well, so I went on the left and I don’t know, I don’t know what happened,” he said.
“I didn’t believe it, I really didn’t believe it,” said Skjelmose, describing the moment he came around Pogačar. Then, the emotion came pouring out, and he dedicated the special win to his late grandfather.
“It means so much to me, I had so much bad luck already this season, I lost my grandad a bit more than a month ago, and I really wanted to give him a win, so this is for him.”
How it unfolded
Action kicked off for the 59th Amstel Gold Race once again in Maastricht, with the Limburg hills in the Netherlands, 34 climbs and 255km of brutally undulating action set to decide the day’s winner. With the return of Evenepoel and the anticipation of a first battle in 2025 with Pogačar, the tension was building.
The break of the day started to form when five men got away from the main peloton in the opening 40km. Five soon turned to eight, and the group, including Michel Hessmann (Movistar), Rémi Cavagna (Groupama-FDJ), Robert Stannard (Bahrain – Victorious),
Emiel Verstrynge (Alpecin-Deceuninck), Cedric Beullens, Jarrad Drizners (Lotto), Hartthijs de Vries and Jelle Johannink (Unibet Tietema Rockets) quickly built an advantage of four minutes.
With the favourites of the day, Pogačar, Evenepoel and Tom Pidcock among their respective ranks, UAE Team Emirates-XRG, Soudal-QuickStep and Q36.5 began swapping turns on the front of the main bunch to keep the gap under control with the hills coming thick and fast.
As the nerves built up for the main climbs and final 100km of racing, the gap to the break fell below the one-minute mark, but there was also a crash for some of the favourites, with Evenepoel, Wout van Aert (Visma-Lease a Bike) and Thibau Nys (Lidl-Trek) reportedly coming down. They were all quickly back on their bikes and back in the peloton.
Dylan van Baarle (Visma-Lease a Bike), Quinn Simmons (Lidl-Trek), Reuben Thompson (Lotto) and Simon Clarke (Israel-Premier Tech) then mounted a counter-attack out of the peloton, quickly eeking out a 35-second lead with 97km to go.
The break started imploding on the first time up the Cauberg, with only the four strongest escapees: Hessmann, Cavagna, Beullens, and Johannink remaining in front of the now UAE-led peloton.
They held a narrow 15-second lead at the first passage of the finish, until they were swept up one by one, and Hessmann was the last to be caught with 69km to go.
Despite Tim Wellens abandoning and Jhonatan Narváez ending his race early due to a crash, UAE were still keeping things tight for Pogačar with numbers, marking every small move made. Pavel Sivakov soon settled into position on the front, with three other domestiques in front of the world champion.
EF Education-EasyPost took over on the front as the peloton hit the Loorberg, with Ben Healy looking primed for an attack. With Pogačar lurking closely behind, however, no big charge came from the Irishman.
When Pogačar’s last man, Brandon McNulty, pulled off the front on the Gulperberg, the race exploded into life after a rapid but cagey opening four and a half hours.
It wasn’t the current world champion who made the difference, however, with former two-time rainbow jersey winner Alaphilippe kicking things off with a stinging attack. Pogačar followed, of course, but it didn’t look as easy as it normally does for the Slovenian with 47.5km to go.
The pair went away from everyone else, but only with a narrow 13-second lead heading onto the Kruisberg. This was where Pogačar returned to his dominant self and attacked away with stunning seated power to go solo with more than 40km still to ride.
Lidl-Trek were looking strong behind, reeling in Alaphilippe with two in the chase group. Evenepoel, Van Aert, Healy and Pidcock were also present in the main group behind, still within 13 seconds of Pogačar.
He didn’t disappear into the distance, but as racing hit the Eyserbosweg for the first and only time, the gap to the lone leader grew out to 30 seconds. Evenepoel had a teammate, Ilan Van Wilder, to chase for him, who kept the gap below the half-minute mark.
Once the chasers hit the steepest road in the Netherlands, the Keutenberg, Evenepoel accelerated on the front and made an impression on Pogačar’s lead. But the chase wasn’t a united effort, and the Olympic champion was countered by Mattias Skjelmose (Lidl-Trek).
Skjelmose sat 25 seconds behind while the main group of 13 struggled to cooperate in their chase, a further nine seconds back. Evenepoel reignited the chase group with a solo attack that failed 26km from the finish.
He kept trying to break away, however, getting some breathing room just ahead of the second ascent up the Cauberg. Soon, the Olympic champion joined Skjelmose, who maintained a 30-second gap to Pogačar to make it a two-up chase.
Evenepoel was making an impression now, hitting the foot of the Cauberg with only 21 seconds left to make up. Pogačar certainly wasn’t in top form, and looked as though he might become unstuck at the hands of the Belgian.
The chasing group, too, wasn’t out of it yet, with Healy, Van Aert and Pidcock all still in the game for victory and now just a few seconds behind Evenepoel and Skjelmose.
Pogačar crossed the finish line and took the bell just 13 seconds ahead of the chasing duo, with the big group only a further 18 seconds down. Just 20km and three more climbs separated him from the victory, but he was, for once, looking very vulnerable.
The bigger group of chasers were failing to cooperate once again and had left it up to only Evenepoel and Skjelmose to try and deny Pogačar the first part of the Ardennes triple.
12km further down the road, and the unthinkable had happened, Evenepoel and Skjelmose had pulled back the world champion, proving that he isn’t invincible. With Pogačar clearly not at his best, Evenepoel gave him no time to rest, upping the pace on the flat to ensure he still had to work for it.
Only one climb remained, and the organisers looked set to get just what they wanted by returning the Cauberg to its previous position 2.4km from the finish, however, it was cagey, with Pogačar gambling on a sprint and Skjelmose actually working on the front to ensure the quickly closing bunch had no chance of infiltrating the podium.
Evenepoel led the trio around the final corner and onto the iconic finishing straight in Berg en Terblijt, which has witnessed some famous finishes over the years. The Belgian sprinted from the front as he did in his return race at Brabantse Pijl, but Pogačar had the power to come around him, only for Skjelmose to find an extra gear and outkick the world champion by a tyre’s width.
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