{"id":160536,"date":"2025-09-22T07:28:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-22T07:28:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/160536\/"},"modified":"2025-09-22T07:28:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-22T07:28:10","slug":"van-wilder-watched-from-hot-seat-with-quite-some-stress-as-pogacar-tried-to-profit-from-evenepoels-slipstream","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/160536\/","title":{"rendered":"Van Wilder watched from hot seat “with quite some stress” as Pogacar tried to profit from Evenepoel\u2019s slipstream"},"content":{"rendered":"

The biggest surprise<\/a> <\/p>\n

at the World Championships Time Trial for elite men on Sunday was undoubtedly Ilan Van Wilder<\/a>. The Belgian finished third in the time trial, upsetting the expected podium of Remco Evenepoel<\/a>, Jay Vine, and Tadej Pogacar<\/a>. Van Wilder ultimately finished one second ahead of the Slovenian.<\/p>\n

And so, Evenepoel’s fellow countryman was able to join the world champion at his press conference as the bronze medalist. \u201cI had a good day. I said beforehand that my goal was to finish in the top ten and that on a good day I might be able to finish in the top five, but this is beyond my expectations.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWith this course and these conditions, it was probably my best chance ever to finish on the podium of the World Time Trial<\/a> Championships,\u201d he continued. \u201cI had a good pace and was very satisfied with my performance afterwards. From the hot seat, I saw quite a few men explode, so my hopes of making the podium grew.\u201d<\/p>\n

Continue reading below the photo!<\/p>\n

\"evenepoel-vine-van-wilder\"\/Van Wilder watched with excitement last meters Evenepoel and Pogacar<\/p>\n

It certainly was exciting. Van Wilder just managed to keep Pogacar and Isaac del Toro off the bronze medal. While Evenepoel crossed the finish line cheering, his compatriot was mainly concerned with the Slovenian’s time. \u201cTadej came very close, and he had some slipstream from Remco, so I was quite stressed. In the end, the difference was one and a half seconds, but in my favor. For me, third or fourth is a difference between night and day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Koen Pelgrim, the coach of both Evenepoel and Van Wilder, confided to us after the race that the number three is very good at altitude. An advantage, especially in Kigali. \u201cI didn’t do any specific altitude training because I knew I could handle it pretty well. In the end, everything just fell into place: this is without a doubt the best performance of my career.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The biggest surprise at the World Championships Time Trial for elite men on Sunday was undoubtedly Ilan Van…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":160537,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,85],"class_list":["post-160536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cycling","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160536\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/160537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}