Mattias Skjelmose known as his experience at Wednesday’s Flèche Wallonne “one of the crucial uncomfortable moments of my life”. The Dane skilled the onset of hypothermia from the chilly, wet circumstances on the second of 4 climbs of the Mur de Huy, and couldn’t proceed the race, the place he completed runner-up final 12 months.
The Dane advised reporters immediately that he has recovered and has set his sights on being a contender at this Sunday’s Liège-Bastogne-Liège, the place he was ninth in 2023. This time, he’ll must face favourites Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) and Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck), who’ve each taken Monuments this 12 months.
“I’ve certainly not been capable of present myself but, sadly, however I do understand how I felt on the bike. I actually felt good within the Amstel and that was additionally the case throughout the first ascent of the Mur de Huy within the Flèche Wallonne, simply earlier than I received freezing chilly,” Skjelmose advised reporters on a video name on Thursday, a lot of his feedback reported by Wielerflits.
“I’m actually satisfied that I’ll combat for the rostrum on Sunday in Liège. My [podium] – one, two, three? I see myself standing there with Tadej and Mathieu. But we’ll see in what order that’s on Sunday.”
His Lidl-Trek crew known as the circumstances at La Fleche Wallonne “brutal”, because the peloton was battered with rain and hailstones, the temperate dropping to simply 1°C at one level and even snowflakes defining the cruel circumstances.
“I don’t know if we made a mistake, however UAE went fairly early yesterday in Fleche, simply when the hailstorm got here, and I attempted to comply with. It meant I couldn’t get my rain jacket on. But fortunately, Toms Skujiņš was already on his method to me however I wanted to comply with on the entrance and I ended up getting so chilly that I couldn’t put my jacket on and I couldn’t get well,” he advised media.
“I didn’t realise I used to be hypothermic on the bike, I used to be shaking, however I believed I might get well however once I stopped on the Mur for the second time, I couldn’t management myself. That was one of the crucial uncomfortable issues I’ve ever achieved.”
Skjelmose and 4 different teammates pulled out of the race. In truth, a complete of 131 riders within the peloton recorded DNFs on the mid-week race within the Belgian Ardennes. Of the 44 who completed, Skujiņš was twelfth.
Afterwards, Lidl-Trek confirmed that Skjelmose and different riders had been taken to the crew bus the place they’d heat showers, scorching drinks and had been feeling higher. So a lot better, Skjelmose mentioned, that on Thursday, he and his teammates rode the ultimate 95km of the Liège route for reconnaissance, noting, “I had muscle ache, however finally I felt lots higher three hours later” following the experience.
Just 23 years outdated, Skjelmose was proven on video throughout his ordeal shivering uncontrollably by a roadside spectator, with crew employees lifting him off his bike and carrying him to the rostrum space on the end line and getting him to the heat of the crew bus. He was requested if these photos had been acceptable to be proven earlier than a full analysis, in mild of controversies surrounding photos of the horrific crash on the latest Tour of the Basque Country, which took out Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike), Primož Roglič (Bora-Hansgrohe), his teammate Natnael Tesfatsion and others.
“Given the present scenario, I believe it’s good that these photos are there. I believe plenty of followers do not perceive why so many guys have left the race. Of course, not everybody was in the identical state as I used to be, however this gave the followers a good suggestion of what the climate circumstances had been like,” mentioned the Dane.
“If I had ended up within the hospital in a really unhealthy situation, I’d have considered it in a different way. In the Tour of the Basque Country the scenario was utterly totally different, for instance. But now it confirmed the scenario nicely. It was additionally no downside for my family members. They knew in a short time that I used to be OK, although the photographs had been, in fact, fairly excessive.”
Already this season, he had a podium on the Faun-Ardèche Classic, a stage win and third at Paris-Nice and was third general at Itzulia Basque Country. While he completed seventeenth at Amstel Gold Race and couldn’t end Liège, the Dane confirmed the shape is there and the main target as nicely for Sunday.
“What I take away from these two Classics is that I’m within the form of my life,” he mentioned.
