Mathieu van der Poel wants to ´make the gap smaller to Tadej Pogacar - "I sometimes ride behind him too"

Mathieu van der Poel will have to face Tadej Pogacar once again next spring and this motivates him to improve further. The cyclocross World Champion has been thus far unmatched in his first two races, but he was asked about the spring this Monday after the Zilvermeercross Mol and tackled the subject of the Slovenian.

"...I have the impression that people still like the fact that I am racing again. That is a nice feeling," van der Poel told Wielerflits. “Because of what I have achieved on the road, I think that people now look at my performances differently. You can say that it is dominant, but you sometimes see that on the road with Tadej Pogacar. I sometimes ride behind him too.”

On the road van der Poel is one of the very few riders who is also occasionally dominant, winning both cobbled monuments with ease this year - although largely this was because Wout van Aert and Visma were heavily affected by crashes and illnesses.

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In 2023 he lost to Pogacar in Flanders, and this year the UAE Team Emirates took a leap in his performances. This can make him unbeatable in 2025 in any race that features proper climbing - even if it's the ones that suit the Dutchman well. “Look, I know how it can feel, and that is precisely the reason to work even harder and make the gap smaller. That is what I am going to try to do towards the spring classics. It is a nice challenge and a nice point of work for myself.”

At the World Championships course Pogacar was better suited to handle all that climbing, and van der Poel knew it would've been very hard to succeed. “Yes, certainly at the World Championship on the road it was not only behind Pogacar, but with a whole peloton. That did not work either. You noticed that if someone stands out, there is not always anything you can do about it. But you always have to assume that someone can be beaten. I will definitely try to do that in the spring.”

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There have been comments over the past day that van der Poel looks stronger than last year in his debut in Zonhoven. He answers: "... I don't look at it, but I do feel that I've become stronger. Compared to before, I can ride one or two gears higher on the tough sections, purely on power. I can feel that. Last year before the cross season I had already had some indications that I was okay in training, I didn't really have that this year. It was more of a question mark than then, so in that respect I didn't really expect it.”

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