Adrie van der Poel eyes the arrival of more challengers for his son: "It can only make things more interesting"
Cycling
Mathieu van der Poel was again in a league of his own during E3 Saxo Classic. A crash in the early stages of the race shook up the cards a bit, but eventually the Dutchman prevailed in a dominant fashion with a 39-kilometer solo. His father Adrie van der Poel notes that Mathieu has already achieved enough to call 2025 a good year.
"From what I saw, it was a very hard race," Adrie begins his analysis at WielerFlits. "That was mainly because of that crash. It could have gone the other way there. But eventually that group came back, after which it was every man for himself in the truth zone. I think that the better riders were then able to ride away."
Among those better riders was Mathieu van der Poel again. The leader of Alpecin-Deceuninck is clearly in top form. "Of course that doesn’t go away in a few days," Adrie points out that his son won Milano-Sanremo last Saturday. "And these are races that he likes to do. The spring for him and the team is already good. What’s added is only nice. The nice thing is that they just follow their own tactics and look at other teams as little as possible."
With the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix, the two biggest races are still coming up. Right? "No, they are not the two biggest races, because we have already had one of the biggest races," Adrie refers again to Sanremo. "They are also different races, which are longer (than the E3 Saxo Classic, ed.). Especially in Roubaix, luck also plays a role. There are a few other riders coming (Tadej Pogacar, for example, ed.), so that can only make it more interesting."
Can anyone put Mathieu under pressure?
According to Adrie, his son's spring has already been a success. "He doesn't need to do it anymore. He could play a decisive role. I think Flanders will be more difficult, but on the other hand you have Pogacar's team, who are putting everything on one leader."
Second best rider at today's E3 was Mads Pedersen but he was nowehere near keeping up with Van der Poel like he was able to last year at Gent Wevelgem. "I also thought Pedersen was very good and I expect him to be even better next week. Especially when you know that he was sick before Milan-Sanremo. That's an extra team."
And then there was one team completely behind expectations - Wout Van Aert's Team Visma | Lease a Bike. Adrie van der Poel expects the Dutch formation to bounce back in the coming weeks despite lesser start. "They are coming down from that mountain now, but I expect them to be a lot better next week too. Then I expect them to be at the front too."
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- i wouldn't count Pogi out. Low probability of a win, but not impossiblemobk01-04-2025
- Right now it doesn't seem that his legs are there or that his head is in the racevappaxbipmv01-04-2025
- would have been nice to hear exactly WHY he thinks pog has zero chance in some greater detail. i mean, tend to agree that his chances aren’t GREAT, but some explanation from the expert with an opinion would be nice. MINE is that, in spite of the recon he did where tadej concluded that the course “wasn’t that hard” i think that doing the full route at full gas is really going to beat up pogacar’s 145lb body, to a degree that he maybe isn’t expecting. but hey, we’ll see in a couple weeks. like everyone else, i do think it’s supercool that he’s going.OCexile01-04-2025
- Go back to that era and look at the lousy mechanicals he's had at Paris-Roubaix. Take those away, maybe he has another Monument, Van der Poel has one less, and suddenly all the rules change. Those mechanicals preceded his awful crashes - and you're right, that Tour was amazing. Ventoux, TT, and Champs-Elysees?! Something that Pogacar and Van der Poel can't do, just Wout. It still amazes me.RidesHills01-04-2025
- Oh, the impossibility of this kind of comparison. A pre-WW2 Binda had amazing statistics, and that was one era. During what I think of as the romantic era, Poulidor had an incredible run at the Tour without winning, and Bobet won some grand tours and some Monuments. In this modern era (for me: after Hinault), we've had multiple Monument winners win a grand tour (such as Valverde and Kelly, with Kelly the better rider in general), and then we've got someone like Roglic, the true GC rider. Sure there was a Monument that was kind of a fluke (both Pogacar and Hirschi might have won, and twitchy Alaphilippe deserved relegation), but what matters are the 5 grand tours and all these wins across the 1 week GC races except for the Tour de Suisse (you'd think he'd race it to get the set of them all). In this era, since 2000 or so, maybe he meets the description as best non-Tour winner. How many GC riders have these wins and not the Tour? To compare to other eras really is not possible. He's his own unique rider, and it's been amazing watching him for the past many years. That's about all we can say.RidesHills01-04-2025
- Ease up on a brother!bobo01-04-2025
- Primoz finds ways to win. Too bad he'll never take Tour de France.awp01-04-2025
- I don't think I would ever count Wout van Aert out of a race if his head is in it. He is a serious talent.awp01-04-2025
- He's a great rider for sure, not sure if he the best to never win the Tour though.awp01-04-2025
- Hard to imagine that his confidence - that imperious flow state that great athletes operate in - hasn't been affected. But that is a different dynamic than the one you described. He has not become hesitant because he is fixated on his rival. He has suffered multiple traumatic injuries, and I have no doubt he is still 1% off both mentally and physically as a result. Football (both kinds) and basketball players who blow out knees go through a predictable cycle in which they are reluctant to do max efforts even after their doctors have cleared them. I myself went though a small version of that after a back injury. It's just hard once you no longer know where the line is. We saw in his TT a couple weeks ago that he still has power, and for all the hand wringing he is still finishing in the top 10-20 of big races. But as we have seen with others, getting *all* the way back is not assured. I'm not ready to say he is done, but few riders who have been hurt as often and as badly as him remain at the top.MidnightRider01-04-2025