After two months away from racing, Mathieu van der Poel returns to action this week as he begins his final build-up to the Tour de France and a tilt at two rainbow jerseys at the World Championships in Glasgow.
The Dutchman last pinned on a race number en route to victory at Paris-Roubaix in April, and he resumes his season at Dwars door het Hageland on Saturday before lining out at next week’s Baloise Belgium Tour. Speaking to reporters on Monday afternoon from a training camp at La Plagne, he outlined why he preferred to run through his scales in Belgium rather than at the Tour de Suisse.
“It’s better to go all out and try to win in Belgium than be in the gruppetto in Switzerland,” Van der Poel said. “And when you factor in the time trials, I think Suisse and Belgium is almost the same amount of racing days.”
Van der Poel will have no shortage of racing days in the weeks ahead, and he confirmed that he would compete in both road and mountain bike events in Glasgow during the first edition of the UCI’s quadrennial, multi-discipline World Championships. The road race takes place on August 6, with the mountain bike event following six days later.
While a first elite world title on the road will be the main focus of his Scottish expedition, Van der Poel is mindful, too, of the need to start scoring qualification points if he is to compete for mountain bike gold at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. Van der Poel was favourite for gold in Tokyo two years ago only to crash out of the event.
“We’ve talked about it here in La Plagne. Normally, I will also do the Worlds on the mountain bike the week after the Worlds on the road, but without any specific preparation,” said Van der Poel.
“I will try to go there without any pressure and just try to adapt by riding a bit on the mountain bike the week after the road Worlds. I will be there anyway, so maybe something nice can happen there. Of course, the shape should be good from the road Worlds, so I’ll give it a try and see where it ends.”
There are only 36 athlete spots for the cross-country race at the Olympics, with the top eight countries earning two places. The Netherlands is currently ranked 31st in the standings, which puts the onus on Van der Poel to race mountain bike events in the latter part of the season, starting with the Glasgow Worlds.
“It will not be easy to get there and that’s also the reason why I’m taking the chance and going to the Worlds without any mountain bike training beforehand,” Van der Poel said.
“It’s a bit of a gamble, but we have to try it to get the starting spot in Paris. If I want to go there, then for sure I have to go mountain biking.”
Tour de France
Van der Poel can approach his summer campaign in a relaxed frame of mind having already triumphed in winter, when he claimed his fifth cyclocross world title, and in spring, when he landed both Milan-San Remo and Paris-Roubaix either side of placing second behind Tadej Pogacar in a tumultuous edition of the Tour of Flanders.
Those successes seemed to vindicate the philosophy of his Alpecin-Deceuninck squad, who had privileged training over racing in the early season by hot-housing their Classics unit at a training camp in Denia, an approach they have replicated ahead of the Tour.
Such lengthy training camps have marked a change of pace for Van der Poel, who had toggled between disciplines and bounced from race to race for much of the early part of his career. At 28 years of age and after nursing a back injury for the past two years, Van der Poel has – perhaps reluctantly – begun to appreciate the value of such patience.
“If it turns out to be successful like the Spring Classics, then for sure it’s nice,” Van der Poel said. “But now I’m really eager to go racing again. It’s hard if you crash, because it means you’ve done a long preparation for nothing, basically. But it’s part of modern cycling, I guess. I think I feel good with the preparation I do now. I raced already a lot in my life and now I make sure it counts when I’m on the start line.
“In the past, maybe we did sometimes a bit too much racing, just a bit unprepared sometimes, going from race to race. It’s good for me sometimes to have a good block of training. I think it also gets me to a different level.”
This will be Van der Poel’s third Tour de France, with his previous two appearances ending in early withdrawals, albeit for very different reasons. In 2021, Van der Poel claimed victory on stage 2 and held the maillot jaune for a week before abandoning to prepare for the Tokyo Olympics. Last year, on the other hand, the Dutchman arrived at the Tour already exhausted from his exertions at the Giro d’Italia and he pulled out on stage 11.
“I’m motivated to do a good Tour,” Van der Poel said. “It’s the first year I’m coming in with a really good preparation, without other things to think about, so I’m actually looking forward to doing my best Tour. I think we’re going to have a strong team.”
Despite his focus on the Glasgow Worlds, Van der Poel confirmed his intention to complete the Tour, even if he insisted he would not make a target of the green jersey.
“Paris is the last stop before the Worlds. For sure it’s time to finish it,” he smiled. “I want to make a good Tour like the Giro last year. I don’t think it makes sense to throw too much energy away during the Tour, but for sure I won’t hold back too much either.”
