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Home » Top Stories » Road » Tour of Missouri

Boy Van Poppel, 20, outsprints the field in Missouri's capital city

Published: Sep. 12, 2008
2008 Tour of Missouri, Stage 5: Van Poppel and Van Stayen celebrate.
2008 Tour of Missouri, Stage 5: Van Poppel and Van Stayen celebrate.
Photo: Casey B. Gibson

Call it situational amnesia, call it intense athletic focus, call it an innate (perhaps genetic) animal instinct for winning bicycle races.

Just don't expect a lot of details when you ask Rabobank's 20-year-old Boy Van Poppel how he won Friday's fifth stage of the Tour of Missouri. “People always ask how you do it and ... I forget. I always forget what I am doing because it goes very fast and I don't think. You don't think, you do it. If you think, maybe you don't win.”

2008 Tour of Missouri, Stage 5: Lacombe watches Van Poppel in the sprint.
2008 Tour of Missouri, Stage 5: Lacombe watches Van Poppel in the sprint.
Photo: Casey B. Gibson

In an uphill field sprint that capped a 109-mile trip across Missouri's apparently endless supply of rolling hills, Van Poppel — a former junior world cyclocross champion and the son of 1980's star cyclist Jean-Paul van Poppel — launched his sprint with 300 meters to go, finishing just ahead of teammate Michael Van Stayen and Kelly Benefit's Keven Lacombe.

Pushed, he does remember a few tidbits.

“I remember I thought it was too early (to jump), and I was waiting for the guys behind me to come by, but they never came,” he said.

And he remembers the emotion of his first major professional road win, a win where Columbia's sprint specialist Mark Cavendish could only manage fourth.

2008 Tour of Missouri, Stage 5: Cavendish pitches in to power the break.
2008 Tour of Missouri, Stage 5: Cavendish pitches in to power the break.
Photo: Casey B. Gibson

“It's the best feeling ever, I think,” he said with a big grin.

Columbia's many options

Before stage 5, one question was: what will Team Columbia do? Would they go on the attack again, as they did Thursday, to try to unseat Garmin's Christian Vande Velde from the race lead? Or would the team — perhaps tired from Thursday's relentless pace and now missing two riders to injuries — try to plant one of its top finishers in a breakaway and shoot for a stage win? Or, the team could revert to the sure bet, the plan that worked so well in the first and second stages: control the pace and set up a field sprint for Cavendish.

In the end, the U.S.-based team ended up doing a bit of all of the above.

For the first 15 miles, the team, along with Garmin, patrolled the front as smaller teams threw in attack after attack on the hills, which began immediately. Eventually a solid group of a dozen riders established a break. Columbia had a rider in it — none other than Cavendish.

2008 Tour of Missouri
Stage 5

109 miles/175.8km, from St. James to Jefferson City

Winner:Boy Van Poppel (Rabobank), 20, won the field sprint.
Winning time:3:48:42, for an average speed of 28.7 mph/46.1 kmh.
Leader:Christian Vande Velde, retained his overall lead of 18 seconds over Columbia's Michael Rogers.
Points:Mark Cavendish won both the intermediate sprints and was fourth in the finish to retake the points jersey from Team Sparkasse's Eric Baumann.
KOM:Although the 12-man break's riders — led by Toyota-United's Caleb Manion and Cris Wherry — took all the KOM points awarded Friday, Toyota's Domique Rollin retained the lead in the climber's competition.
Team GC:Columbia continues to lead, followed by BMC and Sparkasse. Garmin is fourth.
Best Young Rider:Liquigas's Roman Kreuzinger, in seventh overall, leads the U23 competition.
Abandons:Jonathan Sundt (Kelly Benefits), who crashed Thursday, dropped out.

And as Cavendish pitched in to help establish a four-minute lead, the break suited almost everyone in the peloton. Most every team was represented, except Garmin, Jelly Belly, Bissell and Sparkasse. And Garmin saw no GC threats in the break – the best placed rider was BMC's Darren Lill at almost 20 minutes behind Vande Velde.

"Today was the perfect combination for our team,” Vande Velde said after the race. “Luckily our team didn't do a tenth of the work as (Thursday).”

Sparkasse and Jelly Belly, however, missed out. And although the teams gave the break free reign for the mid part of the race, allowing Garmin to keep the pace rolling steadily, they began to pitch in in the final miles, bringing the gap down to about one minute.

The break breaks up

With about 40 miles to do, Cavendish showed some weakness, slipping off the back of the break as it approached the day's one KOM sprint. Although he quickly caught back, it signaled the beginning of the end for the break. As the gap came down to near two minutes, the Kelly Benefit's David Veilleux and Lill knew it was time to split.

2008 Tour of Missouri, Stage 5: Veilleux, despite a sprained ankle, was the day's most aggresive rider.
2008 Tour of Missouri, Stage 5: Veilleux, despite a sprained ankle, was the day's most aggresive rider.
Photo: Casey B. Gibson

Lill attacked first, and Veilleux joined him, followed by Toyota-United's Chris Wherry and Rock Racing's Michael Creed. The four worked together for about five miles before Lill and Veilleux attacked again, dropping the other two and speeding into the state capital to start two and a half three-mile finishing circuits.

By that point, however, the pack — Columbia in particular — was smelling a field sprint, and closed the gap to 15 seconds entering the circuits, catching the two before the tough finish hill in front of the state capital building.

In the final lap, Sebastien Haedo (Colavita) and Tony Cruz (BMC) took flyers, but Columbia shut them down, delivering the field to the sprint more or less intact. Van Poppel followed his team's lead out up to the right and jumped a long way out. Cavendish, who spent nearly 80 miles in a break and is not known as an uphill sprinter, managed fourth.

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