Geraint Thomas didn’t understand the tactics of Van der Poel and Kooij at the European Championships: "They were smoking weed in the team car"

"I only saw the last three kilometers," Thomas began, admitting he didn’t catch the whole race. "But I heard Van der Poel (Mathieu, ed.) wanted to create chaos and was attacking. Danny van Poppel, one of the best lead-out men in the world, ended up in the breakaway. And they also had Kooij (Olav, ed.), who was capable of winning," the Welshman reflected. "The tactics... I think they must have been smoking weed in the team car. Those tactics were just unbelievable," Thomas laughed but made it clear he was baffled by the Dutch approach.

“The best lead-out man in the world was in the breakaway,” the INEOS rider continued. “I understand that you have Van der Poel on your team, but as a team manager, you need to be strong with things like that. You should say, ‘I respect that you’re Van der Poel, but if you help Van Poppel lead out Kooij, we win.’ Kooij ended up finishing second by millimeters, and he didn’t even have a lead-out. That also baffled me.”

And so Merlier won the sprint in his home country, securing the European Championship title for Belgium. However, Thomas thought their approach was unusual as well. "Belgium was sprinting with two riders — that’s nuts," Thomas remarked. "From a coaching perspective, you really should focus your chances on one rider. In the end, they won, so it’s hard to criticize that choice, but it could have easily gone wrong. I don’t know if we’ve ever seen that before."

Rowe pointed out that the riders themselves can't be blamed for that. "The responsibility lies with the team selection. It wasn’t their fault they ended up in that situation on race day, but you simply don’t bring two sprinters." Thomas added that if Wout van Aert hadn’t crashed in the Vuelta, he would have been selected for the World Championships. "Would they have sprinted with three riders then? That’s just crazy," Thomas concluded, still baffled.