“I don’t know what you’re trying to get at. What went wrong?” Jasper Stuyven takes swipe at media after Belgium accused of underperforming at world championships

As the postmortem began on yet another silver medal for Wout van Aert at a world championships at the hands of Mathieu van der Poel, Van Aert’s Belgian teammate Jasper Stuyven hit out at what he regarded as the media’s highly critical analysis of the team’s tactics and approach, which the 31-year-old claimed was intent on casting “a strong Belgian team in a negative light”.

As has been the case in recent years, Belgium headed to Scotland with arguably the strongest team in the elite men’s road race, and that strength in depth proved essential as they infiltrated four riders into the decisive split.

While Van Aert couldn’t prevent Van der Poel riding away to glory, he did steal a march on Tadej Pogačar and Mads Pedersen to secure second, and Jasper Stuyven and Tiesj Benoot also took sixth and ninth respectively. Defending champion Remco Evenepoel, however, faded to 25th after several early attacks.

Despite the close but no cigar feel of Belgium’s road race, Lidl-Trek rider Stuyven didn’t take too kindly to being questioned after the race about the national squad’s apparent underperformance, such is the glare of the media scrutiny in his home country.

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When asked by a British reporter if the chase behind Van der Poel was hampered due to Belgium’s inability to insert another rider into the decisive final move, despite having numbers in the group, a visibly annoyed Stuyven said: “I wasn’t there, you should ask Wout. I don’t know what you’re trying to get at. What went wrong? We rode a good race, there were four guys in the front. All our leaders were there.

“And then one guy is able to ride away and win by a minute and a half. So, what went wrong? Not much, really. I don’t know why you guys are always looking to put a strong Belgian team in a negative spotlight.”

He continued: “I think we did a good race. And maybe second for Wout is a bigger disappointment for him than it is for others.

“Van der Poel won by a minute and a half, he was stronger than the rest and he’s a champion.”

(Alex Broadway/SWpix.com)

Meanwhile, Evenepoel, who criticised Belgium’s tactics at the 2021 worlds, when Julian Alaphilippe soloed to the rainbow jersey in Leuven, also defended his team’s race.

When asked if the Belgian squad had lived up to its hefty billing, the 2022 world champion said: “Of course – out of a group of 20 guys, we were in there with five, I think that’s amazing. We did our best, we tried to take control of the race for as long as possible, and on a course like this it’s not easy at all.

“It would have been better if we’d had two or three guys in the front group, but Wout was there and he did a great race. We tried to control the attacks from behind a few times, which made the gap grow quite quickly.

“I think we did our best, though I wouldn’t say second was the highest place possible for Wout, but when you see Mathieu going off, crashing, and going off after again, it’s pretty amazing, so I think he deserved it.”