'It still gives me goosebumps' - Jasper Stuyven on odds-defying victory at 2021 Milan-San Remo

It has been almost a whole year since Jasper Stuyven's monumental, odds-defying Milan-San Remo victory. The Belgian rider doesn’t mind admitting that watching the finish “still gives me goosebumps". The manner of his victory was similar to that of former team-mate Vincenzo Nibali in 2018, and not unlike Julian Alaphilippe’s a year later.

Ad/> “We reached the top of the Poggio and it was not only Caleb [Ewan] but also Wout [van Aert] and Mathieu [van der Poel] all looking at each other. I just had to grab that opportunity to be a bit of an outsider there.” Stuyven grabbed it, and he was gone. Paris — NiceRoglic wins Paris-Nice despite familiar late wobble as brilliant Yates denied13/03/2022 AT 16:10 “I knew on the downhill that was the chance that I should look for, then when I went, and I saw that I had the gap, with no one in the wheel I just knew it's gonna be [the win] or I’m gonna be last of the group.

That's the game you play, and it worked out.” As the road flattened out and with the favourites closing fast, Soren Kragh Anderson (Team DSM) hopped across the gap to join Stuyven for the final kilometre. The Dane seemed prepared to pull them both to the line. With the road running out, Stuyven had struggled to make sense of the Dane’s tactics.

“I didn't know his gameplan, and then when he kept going, I didn't know… Is he gonna ask me to pull again? What do I do in that situation? Because they're really close behind.” Kragh Anderson's efforts gave Stuyven time to recover, ready his sprint and then, with the fastest men in the west looming down on them, punch his way to a famous victory on the Via Roma. When asked what it feels like to win La Primavera, Stuyven describes being overcome with a sense of zen. “It's like