"These are moments you have to cherish" - Mathieu van der Poel's father on the special privilege to wear yellow at Tour

Mathieu van der Poel did it again and stole the show at the Tour de France by winning the second stage to Boulogne-sur-Mer. Along with this prestigious triumph comes also a privilege the Dutchman is already familar with - to ride around in the yellow jersey in next stage(s).

"I only watched the last kilometre. I just didn't want to see the rest," responded his father Adrie van der Poel to the Dutch press that surrounded him after the stage.

He was already able to analyse that one kilometre. "Knowing Mathieu, he must have felt good. When you sit down third or fourth, you have to wait and then you can't react yourself. Now he could, so that's fantastic. How difficult was it that he could do it like that? It's never easy. It turned out to be ideal, because he had everything under control."

"On Saturday, a huge amount of pressure was taken away by the team and Jasper and the stakes were very high. The disappointment would have been great if he hadn't won. Mathieu didn't have super legs on Saturday, but that was also the case in 2021," he referred to the year when Van der Poel wore yellow for the first time after victory atop Mur de Bretagne.

With kind enough parcours without high mountains in the first week, how long could Mathieu hang on to yellow? "To be honest, I haven't looked further than today. I'm taking the Tour like a rider: day by day and then we'll see. Tomorrow (sprint stage, ed.) should normally be possible and then you have another difficult stage and then a time trial... he'll probably go for it and that's always difficult. We'll have to wait and see."

"These are moments you have to cherish, it's unique. Wearing a yellow jersey normally only happens once in your life and I speak from experience," Adrie said with a smile. "He does things... Milano-Sanremo twice, Paris-Roubaix three times, Tour of Flanders three times... once is difficult, but if you're in the business you know how difficult that is."