‘There’s Not Much for Me to Gain in the Tour’: Van der Poel Recommits to MTB World Title Dream

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Mathieu van der Poel is fed up with the Tour de France and steering his stoke into mountain biking.

The all-terrain Dutch ace admitted to Sporza this weekend he’d grown weary of the cycling world’s biggest stage.

“It’s a race that I don’t really like,” Van der Poel said of the Tour de France. “Apart from trying to win stages and wear the yellow jersey there’s not much for me to gain in the Tour.”

Van der Poel has taken all he wants from Le Tour.

He won a stage and wore yellow for six days in his sensational 2021 debut.

Since then, he’s sacrificed personal ambition to form a terrible twosome with Alpecin-Deceuninck’s supreme sprinter Jasper Philipsen.

“I’d rather ride five races where I’m competing to win than 20 stages in which I’m not competing for the win half the time,” Van der Poel said.

“With Jasper on board, my goal is always to help him win as many stages as possible. I like that and it also takes the pressure off me.”

Van der Poel already admitted late last year that his former love affair with the Tour was turning sour.

“To say I was unhappy at the Tour is perhaps a little strong, but I didn’t have a good time,” he said.

Van der Poel reconfirmed to Sporza this weekend something else he’s already hinted at.

Now aged 29, MVDP sees his future cycling summers in the rocks and roots of cross country racing rather than the pomp and splendor of the Champs-Élysées.

It’s a pivot he might pull as early as this season.

A summer on the mountain bike at the expense of the Tour de France would set him on track for the early September cross country worlds. It would also plant a flag for the 2028 L.A. Olympics.

“If I could choose, I would like to become world champion mountain biker this year. I haven’t succeeded yet and it keeps playing in the back of my mind,” said Van der Poel, who already owns rainbow jerseys for road, gravel, and cyclocross.

His best finish in an MTB world championships was third in 2018.

“L.A. will almost certainly be the last Games I participate in,” Van der Poel continued. “It would be great to try to finish there on the mountain bike.”

Van der Poel has a Pogačar problem: ‘It will be difficult to beat him in Flanders’

Van der Poel hasn’t yet confirmed his mid-season schedule.

Alpecin-Deceuninck could be cautious about letting Philipsen’s leadout master run free from Le Tour.

The Lamborghini-driving Dutchman did however tell Sporza that spring will be all about a showdown with Tadej Pogačar at the Tour of Flanders. Van der Poel will then turn to Paris-Roubaix in search of a third-straight win in “Hell.”

Unlike last year, there will be no Ardennes classics on Van der Poel’s program.

Pogačar will stand square in the way of Van der Poel winning De Ronde a record fourth time this April. The reigning world champion has shaped his early 2025 calendar around an audacious double at Milan-San Remo and Flanders.

MVDP and Alpecin-Deceuninck are already thinking forward to their Pogačar problem.

“It will be difficult to beat him, but it is a challenge that I am happy to accept,” Van der Poel said of his Slovenian frenemy. “We are thinking about how we can close the gap on Pogačar because that will be necessary to beat him in De Ronde.

“Perhaps that can be done by slightly different and more difficult training,” he said. “That’s why I’m skipping the World Cup cyclocross in Benidorm, for example, because a training camp in that same period will make me better towards the spring.”

But first things first, Van der Poel has a banged-up rib to recover from and a historic seventh CX world title to chase.

Flanders, Roubaix, and a big decision between the Tour and the mountain bike will follow the French cyclocross worlds on February 2.