Should Bouwman be wary of Schmid? Mountain King got no response from future teammate after Van Aert’s message

Koen Bouwman made a controversial transfer this winter. After spending numerous years serving Visma | Lease a Bike and predecessors, the Dutch rider moved to Jayco AlUla. There, he will bump into a rider with whom he quarreled in the past: Mauro Schmid. In the 2022 Giro, both men were at the front in the full finale of the nineteenth stage. Bouwman won, but Schmid stayed behind and became angry with the Dutch rider.

In the podcast De Rode Lantaarn, Bouwman looked back on that moment. The blond climber made a sudden sharp move that day in the final turn, only a hundred meters before the finish. Consequence: Everyone steered straight ahead except Bouwman, who won the stage. It took quite a while for the jury to approve the winner's move and declare him the stage winner for the day. Bouwman apologized to Schmid but couldn't do anything about it for several reasons.

Read more below the photo.

Bouman won the Settimana Coppi e Bartali this year.

Bouwman screwed up: I said, "your win will come"

"I started too late," Bouwman remembers. "I thought: wait, wait, wait. I cut that corner very sharply, yes." In the evening, Wout van Aert immediately sent: "I'm proud of you, that was a nice corner, bro. That's how a cyclo-cross rider would do it, too." Yet the winner of the mountain jersey that year also felt the need to encourage Schmid, who was "cut off in his wheel."

"I sent him a message in the evening. I asked for his number and wrote that I wasn't going to apologize but that I was sorry that that corner was in the middle of the sprint. I would have preferred to sprint in a straight line. I closed with the words, 'That big win will still come for him,'" Bouwman concluded, not knowing that Schmid had already won a stage in the 2021 Giro and was already a big man.

Bouwman was put back into place by Pascal Eenkhoorn, who was more in tune with the facts than his teammate. "Stupid, he won a stage in the Giro d'Italia last year." Little did I know, haha. Still had to apologize for not knowing that. He didn't send a message back. When I saw him in the race the day after, he indicated he didn't want to talk to me anymore. "Oh well, we're grown-ups; I'm sure it will work out," said Bouwman, who will go to training camp with Schmid on Sunday and have some explaining to do then...

Below the stage in question.

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