The Italian Simone Avondetto sprinted to silver 48 seconds after Hathererly, just before the Frenchman Victor Koretzky. “It was clearly not my day. I just had a bad day. There were no apologies for that. Mentally it was a very long competition, but mountain biking is the only discipline in which it is a bit nice to drive around. I tried to enjoy it a bit,” says Van der Poel.
Van der Poel, who started from the fifth start row, moved on a lot of places. Van der Poel seemed to be able to handle the first 20 minutes well, but then quickly dropped. He finally finished 29th on minutes behind Hathotherly.
Beforehand was the hope that Van der Poel could realize a unique golden World Cup quartet. On the road, in the field and on the gravel, the cycling ex andoms already won rainbow jerseys. That historic moment did not happen.
Van der Poel had to leave from the fifth row because he has no high listing on the world ranking. He already won around twenty places in the first hundreds of meters. Koretzky led, but after a round Van der Poel already passed the finish seventh. In the meantime, Hathererly had taken over the lead.
The world’s best mountain biker ever, Nino Schurter, lyrical about Mathieu van der Poel: “That makes him legendary”
Response Hathererly
“I knew it would be a fast game, a kind of time trial,” Hathererly looked back in the flash interview. Although he was the defending champion, he did not apply as a favorite after a difficult season. “But apparently I had ‘one of those days’. This year I combined mountain biking with cycling on the road for Jayco-Alula. That was tough. But the last month I fully focused on mountain biking. Trust came back.”
Mathieu van der Poel tempers high expectations towards World Championship mountain bike: ‘a bit strange’
Van der Poel will not defend his world title Gravel in Limburg in October. . “I put the bike aside,” he said at the NOS After his disappointing 29th place. That means that he also lets the European Championship on the road, early next month in France.