Luca Mozzato on the podium of De Ronde!
Luca Mozzato, 2nd in the Tour of Flanders, takes the 1st podium in a Monument in the history of the ARKEA-B&B HOTELS team.
Photos : Getty
“It’s a result that exceeds my expectations. If someone had said to me this morning, ‘you’re going to be in the top 20’, I’d have been happy, and ‘in the top 10’ I’d have signed up straight away. But on the podium… I think I made the effort at the right time. Everyone wanted to anticipate Van der Poel’s attack. In my head, the objective was to get over as many climbs as possible in the first group by smoothing out my efforts. And that paid off in the final, because in the last 30 or 40 kilometres, I was in pretty good shape. It was a race where everyone finished ‘cooked’. We were lucky to catch Bettiol and Teuns in the final sprint and I’m very happy with 2nd place.”
“We need to immortalise this moment! This first podium on a monument, it has value. The Tour of Flanders is one of the most beautiful classics in the world. For Luca, 2nd place is a very fine performance. He’s a brave man, a rider who ‘does the job’ as it should be done. He knows how to exploit everything to the millimetre. More generally, this performance also shows that the ARKEA-B&B HOTELS team is capable of competing at the highest level.”
“It’s a great joy! A podium on a Monument… When you start, you always hope for it. But to actually achieve it… It was a really great day, which started well with David Dekker in the breakaway. The more we progressed in the race, the more we saw that our two Italians, Luca Mozzato and Vincenzo Albanese, were doing well. Unfortunately Albanese crashed on the descent of the Koppenberg and we could have had a 2nd rider in the chasing group in the final. Everyone rode behind the chasing duo. Luca did a sprint like he knows how. He gave us a real treat”.