"I said to my teammates: I am going for the sprint today” - Mathieu van der Poel adds bunch sprinting to his abilities in season-opening Le Samyn victory
Cycling
It hasn't taken Mathieu van der Poel very long to make an impact during the 2025 road racing season. In his first outing of the campaign, the Alpecin-Deceuninck superstar took the win at Le Samyn 2025, proving himself a dominant winner in a bunch sprint finale.
Van der Poel only made a last minute choice to race at Le Samyn, with his involvement announced by his team on Monday. As shown by his performance on the day though, launching multiple attacks from far out before ultimately settling for a sprint win, Van der Poel clearly enters the season in strong form. “I am very happy with this,” the former world champion reflects in his post-race interview afterwards. “I had good legs, but it was difficult to make a difference here. Many riders were also looking at me. At fifty kilometres from the finish I said to my teammates: I am going for the sprint today.”
As it turned out, that proved to be a good decision. “On such a finish – after a difficult final – I am able to win. I entered the sprint with confidence and thus won,” he assesses with a beaming smile. “The team managed to keep me in front all day. I am very happy with this victory.”
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Mathieu van der Poel DOMINANT in Samyn.
— Cycling on TNT Sports (@cyclingontnt) March 4, 2025
First road race. First victory for the Dutchman in 2025 😎
📺 @tntsports & @discoveryplusUK pic.twitter.com/bjWlYnJ2Ja
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- Hopefully the women won’t be requesting equal prize money as for the men’s race. Even an average week long men’s race is harder than this travesty.
UltimateOpportunist15-04-2025 - So is Pogacar, whose rivals are van der Poel in the monuments and Vingegaard at the Tour, doing the same with his limited calendar of race days?RidesHills15-04-2025
- An interesting description, but I think it misses his motivations. He meets a goal and moves on. Van der Poel does race the Tour, though lately as lead out for Philipsen, after achieving the goal of wearing yellow one day. Same with the Giro, he met his goal and moved on. But yes, lately that sure looks like winning the monuments more than anything else.RidesHills15-04-2025
- Totally agree, if only for the reason that it sends the totally wrong message not to treat it that way, let’s get drunk then we can do stupid things without much punishment, and the drunker the safer. In fact, if alcohol is accepted as a reason for turning to bad behaviour, perhaps representatives of the industry should systematically also be punished financially when there are convictions.Mistermaumau15-04-2025
- I mean the year before cables were external aspect should help narrow down the options as that can only be 1 year if you look at every bike it's the year cables disappeared.HoopoeChai15-04-2025
- If other riders just give up when VDP and Pog turn up to race why bother at all. Sad to hear this attitude and there is the problem riders saying we have lost before the start . We have seen loads of time both riders can be beaten. Less neg and more positive.paultryan200215-04-2025
- I always thought the very best in a sport drove each other and their closest rivals to be better, Tadej and MVDP are driving each other to be better does that mean the rest have given up? To hear many of the pundits you'd think that was the case, they need to drag themselves up to the level to beat MVDP and Tadej because the two of them are not going to waitslappers6615-04-2025
- Must feel like a dream when he's back riding the smooth roads hahaPogboom15-04-2025
- Covid racing was great! You could actually hear the cyclist suffering.
Front24215-04-2025 - I'm pretty sure that it was 2011, when he as on the Saxo Bank team, and the bikes in question are the Specialized S-Works Tarmac SL3 and SL4.
santiagobenites15-04-2025