Interview | “The more Mathieu van der Poel complains, the better he is”, training buddy Jan Maas laughs

Maas spoke with IDL Pro Cycling at the Amstel Gold Race, where he was really looking forward to racing. "Definitely. The Amstel Gold Race is always a great race, so it takes no effort to motivate yourself for such a race – especially when it’s in your own country."

However, Maas had to compete in the Amstel Gold Race without the designated leader of the team, Michael Matthews. "He had a hard fall during the Tour of Flanders, in the descent of the Koppenberg. Michael has not recovered from his injuries in time for the Ardennes races. It's very unfortunate that he's not here right now."

Without Matthews, Matteo Sobrero had to take the reins on behalf of Jayco-AlUla, which he did well. He was in the group with Tadej Pogacar and Tom Pidcock, but a punctured tire at a bad moment played a role in his final position. "Matteo Sobrero already surprised us in the Basque Country. My task was to support him as well as possible." The Italian ultimately finished 38th, while he finished just outside the top 20 in the Flèche Wallonne.

"How do I approach that? Matteo is someone who is very skilled at handling his bike, but on the evening before the race, we also watched the last seventy kilometers of last year's race," explains Maas, who feels very comfortable with the Australian team. "I can just do my thing here. I rode up front a lot, but I've also been in the breakaway group like in Milan-Sanremo. Other than that, I've mainly done what the team asked of me and I'm very satisfied with that role."

As a fellow local and friend of Mathieu van der Poel, Maas also enjoyed the performance of the Dutch cycling artist in the big classics. “That was really nice to see. Just before the Tour of Flanders, we trained together in Spain and he already said, "Last year I rode really well after that." So, I immediately sent him a message after Roubaix saying that it was another good Jan Maas training. He responded with a funny reaction, which was great,” Maas said.

Maas already noticed during the training in Spain that Van der Poel was in good shape, which he gathered from certain of Mathieu’s behaviors. “Which ones I’m referring to? That he starts whining. The more he whines that it's going fast, the faster he races the following weeks. So I knew he was in shape for Flanders and Roubaix," the 27-year-old Dutchman chuckles.

Tom van der Salm (Twitter: @TomvanderSalm)