"Mathieu van der Poel is a jewel for the sport" - Hennie Kuiper overjoyed for first Dutch Milano-Sanremo victory since his in 1985
Cycling
After Mathieu van der Poel became the first Dutch winner of Milano-Sanremo in 38 years, Hennie Kuiper, the victor back in 1985, has revealed his joy at seeing the hoodoo broken.
“I usually call Adrie after a few days if Mathieu has done something nice. I think it's very special that he follows me. I played football in the garden with little Mathieu," Kuiper tells Algemeen Dagblad. "I was also the last Dutch winner of the Tour of Lombardy for a long time. Until Bauke Mollema won that great competition in 2019. I also have a good feeling with Bauke. I actually think it's wonderful to still experience it all. Because I know how great it is to win Milan-San Remo.”
Sadly for Kuiper however, the 74-year-old wasn't actually able to watch van der Poel's crowning moment. "Television let me down. I don't have the right channels in the holiday home. It's also my fault, I'm not much of a techie," he explains.
But now having finally managed to witness the race, Kuiper cannot hide his joy. "I am very happy that Mathieu won. Mathieu always does things that make you think: it's not really possible," he says. "As a cycling enthusiast, it really makes your heart beat faster. Mentally and physically you have to be so strong for that. He is a jewel for the sport. It is great that he is now also part of the club.
His grandfather is Poulidor, his father Adrie van der Poel and he played football with Hennie Kuiper in the garden when he was a kid. What a childhood. I guess little Mathieu would listen to the grown ups talking about their carreers and just think:"I'm gonna do better than that." :)
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- Nice though you have to ask why they call it a wildcard as it’s always pretty obvious who will receive them.Mistermaumau01-04-2025
- Absolutely, we are inundated by articles (not only in cycling or sport but everywhere from stocks to weather to elections) from self-called or popularly regarded experts making calls without reasoning. They basically know little more than any other informed or interested party and base everything on odds. The fact that they never have to justify their wrong calls post event but continue to get to make calls should get some attention. It would be cool if someone tallied up and recorded their predictions for future reference.Mistermaumau01-04-2025
- Yes, I agree but you’re taking risks writing such long posts here ;-) In that sense, the Tourless Primoz discussion is also pretty pointless as he virtually won a Tour (nobody would have counted on Tadej doing what he did at the last moment at that time and I guess it was bad karma for Primoz for so ofren cutting things so fine). I think you over interpreted my original thesis, it was not for trying to explain his current state, it was to suggest there was already mental material pre-crashes that has helped worsen his state, when it rains it pours. I really do remember having the feeling in that past he was more focused on not letting MVDP get better than him than doing his own thing. The seed of doubt was already planted and it doesn’t take much for doubt to grow in all sorts of directions.Mistermaumau01-04-2025
- 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