De Gendt escaped in Paris-Nice… because platoon the wrong drive: “First time in a career that this happens”

Thomas De Gendt (Lotto Soudal) and shoved in to his amazement to join in the escape. “I rode in the back of the peloton”, he did after his story, “all of a sudden everyone went in the wrong direction. After about 50 metres, I knew that we error reason, I turned around with a few other riders, and suddenly we were sitting on the early flight.”

“There was already a group with my teammate Lars Bak,” said De Gendt, “so it was not necessary that I also my chance would go. I rode quietly in the back of the peloton, with Arnaud Démare, Bert Van Lerberghe, Alexander Kristoff and some others, but all of a sudden, they drove us in the wrong direction at a junction. It was a small job, there was no seingever, the arrow hung half to the left, and the first part of the peloton just went ahead on the lane to the right and thought that they were.”

“There was what was called in and we quickly saw that the wrong we were”, he continued De Gendt. “It was Bert (Van Lerberghe), who first said: ‘this is wrong’, so we turned our after about 50 metres, and laughed to each other: ‘we drive or not? and then we just start racing and before I knew it we were away. This is the first time in my career that me this happens to. It was not planned and not at all the intention, but when we were sat, we have good cooperation. It takes a while before a platoon of fully returns, so we had soon a bonus and that was a fluke. All we got then are never much ahead of the pack.”

Because Dylan Teuns, only 1 minute in the standings, was the troublemaker of the day. “The other riders came with me to Dylan to encourage it to drop. I was a Belgian, was their reply, ask him. Normally I don’t do this, because I have experienced that to me was the question: ‘let your posterior movement’. I find that stupid, but they persisted, so I got it him then asked. He wanted to first get some bonificatieseconden grab, but then he didn’t want to immediately drop out know. Eventually when everyone was against him, went in, yet he is at a given moment stopped to pee and we were still twelve. Then we got some more space, though we knew it would be difficult to to keep ahead.”