Bottle throw overshadow victory
Radprofi van der Poel rages for “attempted manslaughter”
Radprofi van der Poel rages for “attempted manslaughter”
04/14/2025, 9:43 am
At the finish of Paris-Roubaix, Mathieu van der Poel is the radiant winner. But the triumph is overshadowed by an incident on the route. A spectator throws a bottle exactly in his face. Van der Poel is horrified and demands law enforcement.
Mathieu van der Poel got off on the finish line, stamped his bike up and let himself be celebrated. He is the king of classic cycling Paris-Roubaix. For the third time in a row, he left all competitors behind – including Tadej Pogacar. “I’m super happy. It was extremely hard today with a headwind on the last kilometers,” he said after 259.2 kilometers, including 55 kilometers over cobblestones. “That means a lot to me. It’s such a hard race and I suffered a lot.”
Pogacar also had to suffer. Because the Slovenian made a serious driving mistake in his debut in the “Hell of the North”, landed on a meadow and had to let van der Poel go. A technical defect then also prevented a catch -up. And so it was another opponent who threatened Van der Poel more than Pogacar.
Van der Poel Will law enforcement
A spectator. On the television pictures it could be seen that Van der Poel had been attacked around 33 kilometers before the finish. A spectator threw a bottle on him and hit him on his face. The Dutchman did not show anything in the race, but later reacted indignantly: “This is unacceptable. It was a full bottle, it weighed half a kilo and I drove at 40 km/h,” said van der Poel: “It is as if you were getting a stone in the face. It hurt a lot.”
The Belgian “Sporza” also said: “When the bottle ends up on my nose, my nose is broken.” He even spoke of “attempted homicide” and hoped “that we can identify the viewer and take legal action. He continued: “If the UCI (International Cycling Association, Note D.Red.) Do not pursue him or she is not pursuing a criminal law, we will intervene with the team. This is completely different from throwing beer.”
Eyewitness reports of a striking group
Van der Poels Team Alpecin-Deceuninck spoke of “criminal” behavior. At the same time, team manager Philip Roodhooft, “as little attention as possible”, wanted to offer the culprit: “Because such people do not deserve it. We will first wait and see whether the authorities can identify someone. But we should not pay too much attention if you see how many tens of thousands of people do what Mathieu and others do here.” At Eurosport, ex-professional Jens Voigt said: “There is a very good chance to find it. I think it’s not a big problem to identify the bottle launchers.”
An eyewitness told the Belgian newspaper “Het Laatste Nieuws” that he had a bad feeling in advance. He reported a group of 10 to 15 people who came by half an hour before Van der Poel’s arrival: “They made a lot of noise and seemed to be under the influence of drugs, so I had a bad feeling. I had the feeling that something would happen,” said Fred de Keyser. He took pictures when Van der Poel came by – and he also provided the Alpecin Deceuninck team. They may help with the investigation. Van der Poel had had to struggle with similar attacks in the past.
