Murphy's law for Lars van der Haar at the World Championships: "If you can still finish 15th after all that, you've done well"

Finishing fifteenth was not likely the result Lars van der Haar had in mind when he made the trip to Tábor. The Dutchman seemed poised to join the fight for the leading positions, but a mechanical problem ultimately put an abrupt end to his Czech aspirations. IDLProCycling.com caught up with him.

Let's start at the beginning, also for Van der Haar. How come that not only he, but also Pim Ronhaar, Michael Vanthourenhout and Thibau Nys, were practically in fifteenth place in the opening round? Van der Haar laughs when we ask him that question. "I was so focused on the start and pushed off so hard that my rear wheel slipped. I didn't miss my pedal, that wasn't the problem, but the rear wheel. Maybe I leaned too far forward or something, but that was already shitty. However, I was able to stay calm and stayed on the inside, which allowed me to quickly move back into the top ten."

Once there, he realized that two orange jerseys were already missing: those of Mathieu van der Poel and Joris Nieuwenhuis, who by then had already taken off. "I didn't mind," the man from Woudenberg in the Netherlands noted dryly. "I knew Mathieu was going to be very strong and had also expected Joris to do well here because the course was somewhat similar to the Dutch National Championships in terms of the corners. He's just very good at this, so I was actually focusing on third place from the start. I think that wouldn't have been possible here, I think a fourth place would have been the best I could achieve, but then I would have had to beat Pim. Otherwise, it would have been a fifth place, so yeah..."

Van der Haar encountered mechanical problems with one and a half laps to go

So how on earth did he suddenly end up in twentieth place? "All of a sudden, my chain broke. That was just after the finish line. You've already seen what flat tires can do in that spot, so then you know if you have to run from there on out, it's completely over. Especially when you still have one and a half laps to go. I think I ran about one and a half kilometers, a distance that already took six minutes on the bike. Running takes you a bit longer, I think I lost two and a half minutes there. If in that scenario you still finish fifteenth and overtake five racers in the final lap, then you've done well," he says, patting himself on the back.

Ask Van der Haar to summarize it all in one paragraph, and you get a perfect answer. "I genuinely had a good day, with super legs. I enjoyed the race and the crowd, but we don't need to dwell too long on that result. Of course, I'm disappointed, but it was so obviously due to mechanical failure. Then you can easily put that into perspective. In the coming two weeks, I hope to achieve some more nice results," says the leader in the X2O Trophy.