Tom powers to Amstel win

Reaction: TOM:  “It feels really good. This year has been so tough, at the start of the year making big sacrifices being away from home so much. So now to finally put it together and get my hands in the air it means a lot. This is a race I’ve always loved racing – it’s pretty special.  “Today the team were fully behind me. Kwiato is going really well but he fully committed to me. To be able to repay them is really special. My hand after Roubaix meant this week I was struggling to sprint. So I was not so confident, but that was just how it was going to end up.  “I knew that this was going to be the front group, and whether more guys came across I don’t know. But I knew that this was already the final [group] here. I think everyone was looking at each other at this point in the race. I put in one attack and people followed, then another one and Tiesj (Benoot) and someone else was with us. We were the last guys to go across to the front. It’s not always about legs at this point.  “Now the pressure is off we can just go and race and do our best – dare I say enjoy [Fleche and Liege]!” KWIATO:    “It felt like we had everything under control from the start, but we exposed ourselves and we were losing numbers. The boys did an amazing job for pretty much the entire race. Then in the last 60-70km to go, we had the feeling that we had to play around with Tom on our own.  “Cam (Wurf) rode from pretty much kilometre zero. We took responsibility, but still with the headwind, the entire race had people coming from the back. It was hard to accelerate and keep the group much smaller. I think Tom was always in the right place at the right time which was our main objective – to keep our leader out of trouble. That’s why he could finish like this. He had really good legs I suppose and it’s finally the victory which he deserved already.  “Chapeau to him – he managed to win Amstel Gold, which is a massive result if you think about it, doing back to back races such as Roubaix and Amstel.”