“That was not the plan” - Mathieu van der Poel stuns Luxembourg with accidental 170km solo raid just days before World Championships
CyclingSunday, 20 September 2026 at 18:17
Mathieu van der Poel has completed his final race before the World Championships with an astonishing 170-kilometre solo victory at the Tour de Luxembourg - despite insisting afterwards that the move was never supposed to happen.
The Dutchman found himself clear almost immediately after the start of the 177-kilometre final stage from Mersch to Luxembourg-Limpertsberg and simply kept riding.
By the finish, what had started as an unplanned early move had delivered Van der Poel his second stage victory of the week, four days after he had also won the opening stage. “No idea,” Van der Poel said when asked what had just happened. “That was not the plan before the start, but I found myself alone from the start of the race in fact, and I just rode my tempo the whole day.”
A group eventually formed in pursuit, but Van der Poel continued at the front while collecting maximum points over the Côte de Nommern, Montée de Gralingen and Côte de Kautenbach.
His advantage later stretched beyond six minutes, with the Dutchman starting the day almost ten minutes down on GC and therefore posing no immediate threat to eventual overall winner Davide Piganzoli.
“I decided to just go all-out”
Van der Poel had initially expected the riders behind to bridge across. “At first I thought the chasers would catch up to me, but I just continued to ride at my power and the gap grew out again, so at that point I decided to just go all-out until the finish,” he explained.
They never made it.
Van der Poel remained clear through the closing circuits in Luxembourg and completed the enormous solo to take another victory, as well as securing the mountains classification.
It brought a remarkable end to a week Van der Poel has used as his final road-racing preparation for the World Championships in Montreal. After winning Stage 1, he said he could still feel a heavy recent training block in his legs and described the hard race efforts in Luxembourg as exactly what he still needed.
He also played down his prospects for Montreal, admitting that he believes the World Championship course is likely to be just a little too difficult for him. That caution has not disappeared, but his final racing evidence before Canada could hardly have been more emphatic.
Read also
Van der Poel leaves Luxembourg with two stage victories, the mountains jersey and a final-day solo extending across almost the entire stage. The 170-kilometre raid may not have been planned, but once the gap began to grow, he made sure it counted.
Kieran WoodDeputy Editor-in-Chief
Kieran Wood is a sports journalist based in Wales and has been active in journalism since 2022. He regularly contributes to DartsNews.com and CyclingUpToDate.com, where he covers professional cycling and darts. In cycling, his work includes liveblogs from major races, including the Tour de France, the Giro d’Italia, and La Vuelta a España, alongside race reports and analysis. He has also conducted interviews with professional riders.
His reporting spans the full racing calendar, from one-day classics to stage races, with a focus on accurate, real-time coverage and clear contextual analysis. For statistics, results, and historical context, he regularly uses resources such as ProCyclingStats. To support reporting on rider activity and training context where relevant, he also references Strava.
In his work, Kieran places strong emphasis on careful sourcing, editorial accuracy, and updating articles as new, verified information becomes available.
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- No idea who will win but seeing this and Remco and Paul and a few others should make next week extremely competitive and strategic. Teams will be working overtime on plans now.Mistermaumau20-09-2026
- Bäckstedt is a phenom, but Reusser was simply far better. On PCS they had a chart of the first 5 in comparison to each other. Of them, Reusser started tied for slowest and then sped up over the last 3/4 of the race. Fabulous!RidesHills20-09-2026
- One performance after the next sets up next weekend as a fabulous road raceRidesHills20-09-2026
- Seixas is my surprise, and Evenepoel was as usual dominant. What a ride, power and form better than anyone else. Congratulations!RidesHills20-09-2026
- It was amazing!!!averagecyclist20-09-2026
- Not sure, Could be he used this race as prep. with specific tests on the first and last stage and recovery in between. We will see in one weekMistermaumau20-09-2026
- So Remco complains all the time , now this is transferred to his team as well🤦🤷.abstractengineer20-09-2026
- incredible but he is not in form for the worldsabstractengineer20-09-2026
- What a ride to finish a fabulous week of racing! I don't know if the Worlds will be better
Rafionain-Glas20-09-2026 - like I trust anyone on here with my personal information. I don’t assume anything about anyone, other than one shouldn’t watch a movie or see a picture of someone and make a broad characterization about them. To see this video and dismiss all the talent hard work, and effort someone has put into their career, and to chalk it up as “easy” is extremely prejudicial. to spout off about someone without knowing anything about them is prejudicial. I know nothing of anyone here and am not attacking who they are, simply the words they post. and don’t take my word for what a photo shoot is like, research it. we had an annual 110 page product catalog we had to produce. It was about 4 days in the studio, and very, very grueling days. for everyone. I was not and am not a model. I was CEO of the company.mij20-09-2026
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