After finishing 19th in Saturday's Plymouth Classic (open in new tab), Mathieu van der Pol (open in new tab) (Corendon Circus) said he feels good ahead of the upcoming UCI Road World Championships (open in new tab).

The Dutchman's final test before next Sunday's road race, the first at the senior level for the Dutchman, did not end with the dominant or surprising performance we have seen so many times throughout 2019, but the 24-year-old was He was satisfied.

"I was able to test my legs and I felt good," he told Het Laatste Nieuws after the race, adding that the semi-classic and subsequent training sessions were "just a matter of getting the distance into my legs."

At 285 km, the World Championships road race is the longest distance Van der Pol has ever participated in. Even though the bulk of his career so far has been focused on blasting through an hour of cyclocross racing, van der Pol has made the transition to the monstrous length of the Classic look easy.

Last year he won the Dutch National Championships (222km), finished second in the European Championships Road Race (230km), and in 2019 he won the Amstel Gold Race (266km) and finished fourth in the Gent-Wevelgem (250km) and Tour of Flanders (267km)

Yorke.

The extra kilometer length added at the end of the tough Yorkshire course was an unknown world for the first-timers; after the 197-km race, they trained for 100 km on the back of a moped driven by team manager Christophe Rudhoft.

"I think it's important to ride about 300 km once. I couldn't do that in the Tour of Britain (open in new tab). This was an ideal day for that and I've done that for the Classics."

Van der Pol did not compete in the sprint in the Plymouth Classic, with Edward Theuns (Trek-Segafredo) holding off sprinters like Pascal Ackermann (Bora-Hansgrohe) in a late attack. Instead, he finished safely ahead of the peloton in 19th place, presumably avoiding the post-race obligations that come with a podium finish.

"It wasn't a great position," he said. 'If the race wasn't difficult, I wouldn't be the fastest with a finish like this. I just crossed the finish line quietly."

He attacked early in the race on the cobbled Moskenstraat climb with 45 km to go. It was a 500-meter hill with a 7.2% gradient, but despite the short distance, it bore ominous signs for next week's road race.

As Van der Pol accelerated, Greg Van Avermaat (CCC Team) and Peter Sagan (Bora-Hansgrohe) jumped on his wheel. This was far from the easiest task in world cycling, and they showed it to the Belgian and Slovakian, who would be among the leading contenders in Yorkshire.

The two managed to hold on and made it to the summit a few bike lengths back. They were the only pair that managed to hold on, although they did not look to be in the same form as van der Pol.

"We could have [left] a little more after that, but the joint work didn't start right away," said van der Pol.

"Suddenly we were together again. It's unfortunate that the course eased up a little bit, otherwise it would have been something for the others to worry about."

"I tested the legs. It felt good and kept me out of trouble. That's always a good thing. I had fun and everything was good."