Matthew van der Poel leaves the Tour of Switzerland with a slight cold
Friday, June 11, 2021 at 09:36:
Mathieu van der Poel will not appear at the start of the sixth stage of the Tour of Switzerland today. The Dutch champion suffered a slight cold after the rains in recent days, and so his team at Alpecin-Fenix decided to put him off track as a precaution.
Despite his retirement, Van der Poel can look back on a very successful tour of Switzerland. The Dutchman won the stages over Lachen and Pavavnau lively. In the second stage against Lachin, he proved too strong for Maximilian Schachmann and Wat Puels in rainy conditions, and a day later he managed to outsmart Christophe Laporte and world champion Julian Alaphilippe in Pfaffnau.
Van der Poel was also allowed to walk around in the leader’s yellow jersey for two days and decided to even attack as leader on Thursday during the mountainous stage to Leukerbad. Finally, what caught the eye of Alpecin-Fenix had to hand over the captain’s jersey to Richard Carapaz yesterday. After Thursday’s stage, Van der Poel finished 55th in the standings after less than twenty minutes from the Ecuadorean.
Van der Poel is expected to start his first Tour de France in about two weeks. After the tour, the 26-year-old rider is also hoping to shine during the Tokyo Olympics. Van der Poel hopes to win the cross-country gold medal as a mountain biker.
After the rains of the past days, Tweet embed He suffers from a mild cold. While he was really looking forward to the next stages, the team’s medical staff decided to pull him out of Tweet embed So as not to harm his health in light of his future goals. pic.twitter.com/mnn57zKWqO
– Alpecin-Fenix Cycling Team (AlpecinFenix) June 11, 2021
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