Mathieu van der Poel will return to the peloton on Wednesday afternoon. After his retirement in the Tour de France, he no longer drove real races. He participates in the Druivenkoers in Overijse in Belgium. “I need competition to know where I stand.”
After the Tour, Van der Poel rode some criteriums, but he was mainly in the fitness room. “I have trained the basics, but not very intensively yet. I now try to get the hardness in with races.”
27-year-old Van der Poel disappointed in the Tour de France, where he complained several times about a lack of form. The cause is for the rider to guess.
“Maybe I also trained a little too hard.”
“It’s very difficult to pinpoint specifically. After the Giro I may have been without a bike for a little too long and I may not have been ready for the altitude training camps yet. Maybe I also trained a little too hard at altitude, because I stood still in the Tour.”
The Alpecin-Deceuninck rider is confident in a successful restart, he said before the start in Overijse. “I think I’m okay to race, otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”
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