Mathieu van der Poel about his success in 2023: ‘I never doubted my new approach’

taketonews

Mathieu van der Poel left his PlayStation at home. The game console used to be a constant companion at training camps for the 28-year-old Dutchman, who liked to play a game of the shooting game Fortnite to fill the hours between his training sessions. Otherwise he would be bored to death during the monotonous days when he had to lay the foundation for a new cycling season.

But now, during a training camp in Spain, Van der Poel has said goodbye to that hobby. He also no longer rides a motorcycle. He prefers to go out all day with his racing bike. As he drives down the driveway of the hotel in the coastal village of Benicasim, he sees the Mediterranean Sea sparkling on the right, and on the left the first hilltop of the Desert de les Palmes nature reserve towers above the tourist hotels. Van der Poel leaves in the morning, stops somewhere for coffee and lunch and returns at the end of the day. “I always only get comfortable around four o’clock. I don’t do much else,” he says. He just can’t resist a round of golf every now and then.

Mathieu van der Poel as a cycling monk; anyone who had ever predicted that would have been declared crazy. He agrees: “Four years ago I would not have wanted this.” At that time he still looked up to what he considered the “boring” road races and the long endurance training and economical racing that was necessary to win. He much preferred cyclocross or mountain biking, disciplines in which he could use competitions to get into shape but also use his strength.

Last year, Van der Poel decided to take a different approach, partly forced by a back injury. This has been playing tricks on him since a crash at the Olympic mountain bike race in Tokyo. He wanted to be “on appointment” more often, to be in top form during the important races instead of trying to win races all season long. That required patience: Van der Poel started training more and racing less, and preferred road races to cyclo-cross races.

It gave him the most successful year of his career. Van der Poel was the first Dutch man in 38 years to become world road champion. He also won the classics Milan-San Remo and Paris-Roubaix. “I realize that it has been a unique season,” he says.

Torn suit

His performance in the Italian classic particularly surprised him, says Van der Poel. “I didn’t expect to be so good there.” After a poor start to his road season, with mediocre performances in Strade Bianche and Tirreno-Adriatico, he arrived solo in Sanremo after an impressive attack on the Poggio. “It didn’t go as expected at first, but I never doubted my new approach.”

He certainly achieved his best form at the World Championships in Glasgow, where Van der Poel took the rainbow jersey after a solo of 22 kilometers – including a crash. He keeps the torn orange suit he got from it as a souvenir in his garage. “When I started the final, I didn’t expect to be sitting alone straight away. When that did happen, it gave me wings.”

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<strong>Mathieu van der Poel</strong> in his last meters before the finish in Glasgow.” class=”dmt-article-suggestion__image” src=”https://images.nrc.nl/Pj_D5z1kxGXhjtKP4r6jusvbeI8=/160×96/smart/filters:no_upscale()/s3/static.nrc.nl/bvhw/files/2023/08/data103753671-d9fced.jpg”/></p><p>With that victory, Van der Poel fulfilled one of his major goals. “It’s nice that you can now tick them off.” However, he quickly canceled the party afterwards with the Dutch delegation in Glasgow. “It is of course a unique moment, so you have to think about it for a moment. But the win is the most important thing for me. Celebrations and ceremonies are not my favorite thing to do.”</p><p>Van der Poel talks about it matter-of-factly in the hotel lobby, which is full of journalists who have traveled to Spain for a conversation with the two-time 2023 world champion – in February he took the rainbow jersey on the cross. He was surprised at the impact of the world title on the road, says Van der Poel. “You notice in everything that it is much greater than in cyclo-cross or mountain biking.”</p><p>He is enjoying himself on the Costa Blanca, where he has been preparing for the new cyclo-cross and cycling season over the past two months. Since he bought a house near Moraira two years ago, more than an hour’s drive from Valencia, he has spent about half the year in Spain, says Van der Poel. “Training is much more fun here than in Belgium. I was recently back for a few days for obligations and the weather was not pleasant. I don’t think I could have trained even a third of what I did recently there.”</p><p>He has learned to appreciate the endurance training required to reach his best level on the road, says Van der Poel. “You just need it to get through the year well. I have worked many more hours and have also been able to train in better quality, so the basis is now a lot broader than last year.”</p><p>It has changed him physically, he notices. He has less problems with his back now that he does exercises almost every day to strengthen his upper body. The first cyclo-cross training of this season – he has only done two – was “terrible,” he says. “That requires an effort that you are no longer used to.” Sprinting from corner to corner suits him less these days; Van der Poel is now looking for a high pace that he can maintain for a long time.</p><h2 class=Liège-Bastogne-Liège

His focus has shifted, he admits. The remaining challenges for Van der Poel lie in road cycling. Trying to win every cyclo-cross of the winter, as he sometimes tried to do, no longer interests him. “There is no point in reaching my best level every cross. Actually, there is only one cross that I want to win.” That is the World Cup, which will be held this season in Tabor, Czech Republic. Of course he also wants to win the other twelve cyclo-cross races on his programme, he is that ambitious. But Van der Poel mainly sees them as training in preparation for the World Cup.

Van der Poel is also looking for new challenges on the road. Winning Milan-San Remo or Paris-Roubaix again is nice, he says, “but checking off the boxes is more important to me than winning them a second time.” That is why he wants to be at his best this year for Liège-Bastogne-Liège, the Ardennes hill classic. “I like to try that. Although I am realistic enough to say that if a Remco Evenepoel or a Tadej Pogacar starts at La Redoute, it will be almost impossible for me to keep up.”

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Nevertheless, Van der Poel will try to win the major one-day spring competitions again in 2024. He thinks he can reach the level of last year again, and that will be necessary, with the competition from riders such as Pogacar, Evenepoel, Wout van Aert, Filippo Ganna and Casper Pedersen.

He has seen the level of the road peloton rise in recent years, says Van der Poel. It is one of the reasons that he has come to appreciate road cycling more. “In any case, it is easier to cycle with strong opponents, so you don’t have to decide the race on your own. The race is so difficult these days because it simply breaks open with 100 kilometers to go. That makes it fun, I prefer a hand-to-hand fight.”

Playing bird

The class of his opponents also forces him to be more choosy in which races he participates in, says Van der Poel. “You can no longer just ride every cross at full speed, or jump from cross to mountain bike to road without preparation. Then you won’t reach the level you need to win.”

Nothing has been decided yet about his program after the classic spring. The Paris Olympics beckon, with a mountain bike course that he has already explored and a road race with a cobblestone climb towards the Sacré-Coeur in the final that is perfect for him. If he wants to ride both races, he will have to skip the Tour de France. “There are a number of options on the table. Mountain biking is still the goal, but I am now also at my best on the road. I don’t want to half start there, so it is a very difficult puzzle to make,” says Van der Poel.

With his doubts, he shows himself to be the old Mathieu again, the driver who in the past continued to attack race after race, simply because he enjoyed it. That version of himself is still there in training, Van der Poel assures. “You can no longer race like that in competitions. The level there is too high. But I hope I will always remain a game bird.”



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