ANALYSIS: Mathieu van der Poel vs Wout van Aert - An eternal rivalry!

Netherlands vs Belgium, Road vs Cyclocross, Mathieu van der Poel vs Wout van Aert. A rivalry with a 13-year history that transcends many aspects of cycling and our Portuguese sister channel Ciclismoatual has delved into the rivalry.

We could well be talking about two compatriots. In reality, Mathieu van der Poel was born in Belgium in January 1995 in Kapellen, a town in the province of Antwerp a mere 40 kilometers from Herentals, where Wout van Aert was born in September 1994. However, while Wout van Aert (a first generation athlete if you exclude his estranged uncle Jos Van Aert who was also a professional cyclist) decided to represent his homeland, Mathieu van der Poel (a third generation athlete, grandson of Raymond Poulidor, former Vuelta winner and three-time Tour runner-up, and son of Adrie van der Poel, winner of the Liege-Bastogne-Liege, Tour of Flanders and a Cyclocross World Championship) decided to represent the nation of his father and a large part of his family, the Netherlands.

In the world of cycling today, there is no greater parallel and no more intense rivalry than this. When we talk about the big stars in modern cycling, we always refer to the "Big 4" (Tadej Pogacar, Jonas Vingegaard, Remco Evenepoel and Primoz Roglic) but we can never conclude this thought by leaving aside the other two big names in cycling today: Mathieu van der Poel and Wout van Aert.

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They've always been rivals in cyclocross:

It was bound to happen. From a very early age, they both excelled in cyclocross, a sport with great historical roots in the very countries they both represent. The path and rise of these two great names is so similar that to begin telling you the story between them, I have to go back to 2011. Mathieu van der Poel had an absolutely dominant year in junior cyclocross.

However, to look at a head-to-head between the two is putting it mildly. Because in reality we're talking about two names that have dominated the sport since they reached the Elite division. Just to give you an idea of their level of dominance. Van der Poel won 161 cyclocross races during his career, while van Aert won 85. All in all, between the two of them, they won between 60%-70% of all the races they took part in.

In terms of major titles in the disciplines, they stand out for having won 9 of the last 10 world titles contested, the exception to the rule being in 2022 when Tom Pidcock won in which both rivals didn't take part. The trend is that both in terms of wins and head-to-head performances, Wout van Aert had an advantage at an earlier stage in their careers when both were dedicated entirely to cyclocross, and as they both made the transition to the road Mathieu van der Poel began to tip the scales in his favor in cyclocross.

Van der Poel and van Aert star in what is probably the greatest cyclocross rivalry ever

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The transition to the road: 

Although Mathieu van der Poel started competing on the road in 2014 and Wout van Aert in 2013, it wasn't until 2019 that both began to dedicate themselves in depth to the road and it was only from then on that they began to achieve renowned results, with the Dutchman joining the Corendon - Circus team and the Belgian joining Team Jumbo Visma (now Team Visma | Lease a Bike, where he still is).

On the road, the two cyclists continued their cyclocross successes and quickly stood out as two of the main figures in the peloton. As early as 2019, we began to notice the main differences in the skills of both cyclists. Van der Poel stood out by winning classics such as the Amstel Gold Race and the Dwars door Vlaanderen as well as a 4th place in the Tour of Flanders (which he would later win on three occasions, the first in 2020) while Wout van Aert won the sprint and time trial in the Criterium du Dauphine and the Tour de France, as well as a Top 10 in Milan-Sanremo, which he also won in 2020 in one of the longest races ever: with a total of 305km (!!!).

Mathieu van der Poel stands out as a one-day classics man. He has a great ability to overcome short but demanding climbs and very uneven terrain, something he has already brought from cyclocross. Wout van Aert, on the other hand, is more versatile in that he defends himself well on the terrain where van der Poel is strong, but also has the extras of being stronger in stage races, which require a high level of physical demand over several consecutive days, as well as his sheer power in time trial efforts that have already earned him several medals in World Championships, European Championships and the Olympic Games;

And speaking of World Championships, even though Wout van Aert hit the post several times, it was Mathieu van der Poel who managed to get a clear shot (unlike in cyclocross, where both have worn the rainbow jersey). It was at the 2023 World Championships in Glasgow, on a rainy August day, that we had one of the most hotly contested races of recent World Championships. In a group of four cyclists that included the two rivals, as well as former world champion Mads Pedersen and now reigning world champion Tadej Pogacar, it was van der Poel who struck a decisive blow 27 kilometers from the finish and van Aert was his most direct pursuer (interestingly, this group of four cyclists was made up of the first four classified in the Tour of Flanders that same year, just in a different order). Van der Poel gave a great display of form but could have thrown it all away when he crashed on the penultimate lap of the Glasgow circuit, but it was all just a scare and the Dutchman ended up beating the Belgian by 1m37s, becoming the first cyclist to hold both the Road and Cyclocross World Champion jerseys at the same time.

Mathieu van der Poel became the 2023 world road champion.

In terms of monuments, in recent years the trend has been clearly in Van der Poel's favor, not only because of the greater number of participations but also because of direct head-to-head victories such as the fantastic duel the two fought on the Poggio in the 2023 edition of Milan-Sanremo. The Dutchman once again proved to be stronger on the short, explosive climbs, leaving behind a group of three riders, including the Belgian's ever-present Tadej Pogacar and the surprising Filippo Ganna, who put in the performance of his life racing at home and stole second place from van Aert in the sprint. In this field, van der Poel has made the difference to van Aert (and all the rest of the competition) and has become the absolute dominator of the cobbled classics this season. He has already equaled the record for victories in the Tour of Flanders and this year he also added the Paris-Roubaix to Flanders (which he won for the second year in a row) while Wout van Aert, despite all the potential he has shown, has yet to get beyond Milan-Sanremo in 2020.

As for the Grand Tours, it's a different story: Wout van Aert entered the World Tour level early, which gave him faster access to the Grand Tours, while Mathieu van der Poel saw his Corendon team miss out on Grand Tour wildcards. The reality of the two stars is different when it comes to the Grand Tours. Van Aert is part of a team that fights for general classification and has the "obligation" to constantly be at the front of the peloton alongside its leader, and occasionally he has his opportunities to show off, whether in time trials, in high mountains, like when he won a stage that included a passage on Mont Ventoux, or in the mythical sprint on the Champs-Elysées in Paris. Wout van Aert has already won a Green Jersey in the 2022 Tour, while at the same time towing Jonas Vingegaard to his first Tour de France victory and unloading Tadej Pogacar in the high mountains. Wout van Aert was also very close to winning the Points Jersey (practically guaranteed) and the Mountain Jersey (he was in a privileged position) in the last edition of the Tour of Spain until he fell on a descent in stage 16 that took the cyclists to the Lakes of Covadonga, and ended up abandoning the race and bringing his road season to an end;

Wout van Aert won three stages in the 2024 Tour of Spain and was leading the points and mountains standings before he abandoned the race due to a fall

As for Mathieu van der Poel, his history is much shorter when it comes to the Grand Tours. He has just one Tour victory, on the famous Mur de Bretagne (which will be back in the 2025 edition of the Tour de France) and a victory in the opening stage of the 2022 Tour of Italy, which at the time earned him the pink jersey for the three days that the Giro was in Hungarian territory. In recent years, despite his status as leader within Alpecin and having fewer obligations than his rival to work every day for a rider fighting for the general classification, the Dutchman has only come to prominence when he has repeatedly launched his teammate Jasper Philipsen to stage victories, as well as the Green Jersey that eludes him.

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Other aspects of cycling:

It's not just in road cycling and cyclocross that we can see the two stars in action. In Gravel, too, a fast-growing sport with a racing style that is a bit of a mix between road and cyclocross, we are already beginning to feel the presence of Mathieu van der Poel and Wout van Aert. Not that they follow the normal racing calendar, not least because the big events in Gravel coincide with the road season, which is their priority. It's more common to see the likes of Alejandro Valderde, Greg van Avermaet or Jan Bakelants in Gravel, who have finished their road careers and race more for pleasure than for contractual obligations. In the near future it will be increasingly common to see these transitions in professionals at the end of their careers, as will be the case with Romain Bardet in 2025. Maybe one day we'll see the full-time transition of Van der Poel and Van Aert, but for the moment we'll only have to enjoy them at the World Championships. Even so, despite it being a one-off occasion each season, it's still impressive that Mathieu van der Poel has already won the Gravel world title in what was only the third world championship in the history of the sport after already finishing 3rd in 2022. Wout van Aert, meanwhile, had a more low-key presence at the 2023 World Cup, finishing in 8th place, 6 minutes behind winner Matej Mohoric.

As for mountain biking, van Aert is not active at a competitive level. Mathieu van der Poel, on the other hand, has only participated in a few races, but his highlight is an XCO European Championship he won in 2019. Mathieu has also publicly confessed his desire to compete in the 2025 Mountain Bike World Championships to the point of questioning his own presence in the next Tour de France in order to ensure that he wins the Rainbow Jersey in the fourth different cycling discipline, something unprecedented in the history of men's cycling, given that Pauline Ferrand-Prevot has already managed to do it on the women's side, having even held the road, cyclocross and mountain bike titles simultaneously in 2014, as well as winning the first ever Gravel World Championship in 2022.

Finally, because we're talking about all aspects of cycling, it's also worth mentioning that neither Van der Poel nor Wout van Aert compete in track races.

Van der Poel was also crowned Gravel World Champion in 2024.

Final verdict:

In the head-to-head, the trend is that Wout van Aert was superior to Mathieu van der Poel during the period when they both dedicated themselves exclusively to cyclocross, but after the transition to the road we began to see the balance tip in Mathieu van der Poel's favour.

The fact that Van Aert has more obligations to the Visma team while van der Poel has the freedom to build his own calendar at Alpecin allows the Dutchman to focus much more on his big goals and thus have more leeway to manage his fitness for other disciplines such as cyclocross and occasionally gravel and mountain biking;

Another very noticeable trend is that Van Aert is far superior when it comes to stage races, which require a high physical level over several consecutive days, while van der Poel is stronger in one-day races;

In general terms, Wout van Aert is much more complete than van der Poel because he's a cyclist capable of competing in any type of stage: he defends himself considerably better than van der Poel in the mountains, he's an excellent time trialist and he's also very capable in the sprint. Van der Poel, on the other hand, is stronger on short, explosive climbs and in cobbled races (where van Aert also defends well, but not with the same ability);

At the end of the day, the scales have to tip in favor of Mathieu van der Poel because in terms of results he outperforms van Aert in practically every aspect of every discipline. He has more world titles in cyclocross, a discipline in which they have both competed for a longer period of their careers, he was world champion on the road, unlike van Aert, and he is also the reigning Gravel world champion as well as the holder of 6 monuments compared to just 1 for van Aert;

With both of them at the peak of their careers, it's possible that we could still have more chapters to add to this story, but it seems difficult to reverse the current trend of both cyclists not planning very significant changes to their careers.

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