Meet The Riders And Their Rides

Mathieu van der Poel

 [Editor’s note: Mathieu Van der Poel suffered a bad crash in the Tokyo Olympics mountain bike race in the summer of 2021. He resumed racing again before the end of 2021 and placed second at one of the biggest cyclocross races of the year. Then he hurt his back so badly again that he skipped the Cyclocross World Championships in Arkansas in January of 2022 as well as the rest of the cyclocross races that winter while he recovered. He was expected to resume racing in the Spring Classics of road bike racing.

His father and his brother had both been plagued with back problems in their cycling careers, too, according to our sources. We don’t know how Van der Poel will do in his racing in the years ahead, but we expect that he’ll a major factor in road racing for years to come. Still, before his crash in the Tokyo Olympics, Van der Poel was reportedly having back problems in May of 2021, too.

There’s no way to know for sure what will happen in Van der Poel’s cycling career in the years ahead. At the time we wrote the following article, which appeared in our September 2020 issue, Van der Poel was widely thought to be well on his way to becoming one of the greatest cyclists of all time.

When we interviewed him for the following profile on him, he was still near the top of his cycling game and was hoping to pick up an Olympic gold medal in mountain biking. The Tokyo Olympics were still a year away when we published this article in 2020. The Olympics had already been postponed until 2021 at that time, while the world changed gears due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the summer of 2021, Van der Poel ended up wearing the yellow leader’s jersey for six stages of the Tour de France. Then he started going down in the overall standings in the race and pulled out of the Tour so he could head to Tokyo, intending to pick up the gold medal in mountain biking in the Olympics. 

Shortly after the Tokyo Olympic mountain bike race began, Van der Poel went over the bars in a bad crash on a steep and rocky descent in the first lap of the race. The officials at the race had had a piece of plywood removed from a rocky descent after practice. Van der Poel apparently didn’t see or hear about that change and crashed hard as a result, hurting his back in the crash. His Olympic dreams were ruined that year.

It was Thomas Pidcock who ended up taking the Olympic gold medal in mountain biking in Tokyo in 2021. Van der Poel’s recurring back problems left his cycling future up in the air for a while, although he was expected to make a full recovery in the next three months.

Today in July of 2024, Van der Poel is racing in the Tour de France again, but he hasn’t been doing nearly as well as we’d expected. He’s been finishing well out of contention for an overall win so far, with his place in the daily stage finishes ranging from a placing of 161st in Stage 3 to a finish of eleventh place in Stage 9. Things can and do change, though. He finished 12th in Stage 16 on July 16th, 2024, putting him in 87th place in the General Classification rankings that determine the overall winner at the end of the 2024 Tour. Then on Wednesday, July 17th he finished 100th in Stage 17, knocking him down to 92nd place in the G.C. rankings.

The 2024 Tour de France will come to an end on Sunday, July 21st, so it will be interesting to see how he ends up. Van der Poel chose to skip the mountain bike race in the Olympics this year so he could devote himself fully to this year’s Tour de France, and still get two weeks to recover before the Olympic road race takes place. We expect that his long-term goal is to win the Tour de France as many times as he can in his career, and we don’t think he would be as well prepared as he’ll need to be in the future if he pulls out of the Tour de France to compete on mountain bikes in the Olympics this year. 

Van der Poel has been previously predicted to win the overall title in the Tour de France multiple times by the time he retires from racing, so we can’t rule out the possibility of a major comeback in the days ahead.

Let’s take a look back at what we wrote about him and what Mathieu shared with MBA  when we profiled him and his Canyon mountain bike back in 2020:]

 

Van der Poel finished second overall in the World Cup’s XCO rankings in both 2018 and ’19. He beat Nino Schurter 9 out of 10 times in their 2019 World Cup match-ups when both the Cross-Country (XCO) and Short-Track (XCC) races are included. Photo: Canyon Cycles

Some of the greatest cyclists in history have predicted that Mathieu van der Poel will be ranked among them in the years ahead.

Five-time Tour de France winner Eddy Merckx recently predicted that Mathieu van der Poel will win the Tour de France in the future. Said Merckx, 74, “Van der Poel can win everything, even the Tour.” Van der Poel is widely considered the most talented cyclist on the planet.

Merckx, who is tied for the record of the most Tour de France wins in history (five) with Jacques Anquetil, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain, is considered the greatest competitive cyclist in history. Nevertheless, some people think that Mathieu van der Poel’s career could someday eclipse even that of Eddy Merckx.

That type of success is still years away, of course. Van der Poel is still in the early part of his pro racing career. One thing is certain, though, Mathieu van der Poel is —or was—a force to be reckoned with.

RIDER PROFILE

Name: Mathieu van der Poel

Nickname: MVDP

Age: 29 (as of July 2024)

Birthdate: January 19, 1995

Birthplace: Kapellen, Antwerp, Belgium

Height: 1.84 m (6 feet, 1/2 inch)

Weight: 75 kg (165 pounds)

Shoe size: 11

Helmet size: L

Waist: 81 EU (32-inch U.S.)

Marital status: Single

Car(s): Maserati Levante four-door

Started racing or competing: Age 5

Turned pro: 2014

Racing/riding specialty: Cycling (cyclocross, MTB, road)

Favorite course or riding area (North America): Whistler, B.C.

Favorite course or riding area (Europe): Lenzerheide, Switzerland

Favorite food: Oatmeal

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