Mathieu van der Poel steps up Tour de France preparations at La Plagne
Cycling
For the fourth time in his career, Mathieu van der Poel will take on the Tour de France later this month. With the 2024 Tour now just a matter of weeks away, the Rainbow Jersey is stepping up his preparations alongside his Alpecin-Deceuninck teammates.
Training hard at La Plagne in the French Alps, van der Poel joined teammate Jonas Rickaert for a ride as showcased by the 30-year-old Belgian's official Strava account afterwards. The world champion and his domestique took on just over 60km, totalling 2,227km of elevation gain and being covered in a time of just under two hours and forty minutes.
Last year's Green Jersey winner at the Tour de France, Jasper Philipsen was also present with the Alpecin-Deceuninck squad at La Plagne. Sadly for the Belgian, who managed to secure himself four stage wins alongside his points classification victory at the 2023 edition of the Tour de France, Philipsen's attempts at training rides have been affected by Mother Nature.
As shown via the official Instagram story of the 26-year-old, the Snow in the French Alps was giving Philipsen a little difficulty on his training rides. "Guess we're taking the skis today!" he captions a picturesque image of the pure snow and fog at La Plagne.
“This is the most logical choice to be able to prepare for my goals without time pressure,” van der Poel said recently of his plans for a busy summer that sees the Rainbow Jersey take on the Tour de France and the Olympic Games. “The combination with MTB was too difficult. But who knows, maybe in LA ‘28 I can focus on mountain biking. My ambition for the Tour de France? I hope like last year to assist teammate Jasper Philipsen in his hunt for stage wins and a possible green jersey. And the goal is to also win a stage myself this year.”
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- Most of these have nothing to do with rider safety or are completely unachievablevappaxbipmv23-12-2024
- Depends on how fast the Cipressa would be beforehand and in what condition Philipsen would bevappaxbipmv23-12-2024
- Some things sound crazy until they aren't, what if he's actually right? 🤷vappaxbipmv23-12-2024
- Why make a comment to state the obvious? Of course MvdP is much better at CX than Pogacar, does anyone doubt that But that wasn't his pointvappaxbipmv23-12-2024
- If you look at road alone obvi Pogacar is the better rider. But maybe MVDP is the better overall rider since he can win in three plus disciplines?mobk23-12-2024
- Correction on 2021 Olympics. It was mainly the Dutch ladies who didn’t know who was leading the race. Other teams like the Germans and Italians knew that Kiesenhofer was out front.mobk23-12-2024
- A champion turning into a sore loser. Or is he on coke again?
UltimateOpportunist23-12-2024 - If you look at the major races they’ve both been in, van der Poel had the early edge as lately Pogacar has had the advantage. It’s all on procyclingstats.RidesHills23-12-2024
- I wouldn’t assume Tadej can’t win at cross. He did a cross race, not a World Cup, a few years ago and crushed the field. It was a minor race. But he can win anywhere.mij23-12-2024
- I wonder what would happen if Pogacar attacked on the Cipressa instead of the Poggio in San Remo? Would MvdPoel still be able to follow?Ride197423-12-2024