Thomas Deeker question Mathieu van der Poel's potential in World Championships - "This is one of his hardest seasons ever, he has not been good physically"

Following a disappointing Tour de France, Mathieu van der Poel seems to be back on track. His victory in GP de Wallonie is proof of his improvement. But Thomas Deeker thinks otherwise regarding his future performance this season and especially at World Championships Road Race on the 25th of October.

In a conversation with the Live Slow Ride podcast, he said, "I think there is a certain uncertainty in it. This is one of his hardest seasons ever," Dekker continued. "This year, for the first time in his life, he has not been good physically. That actually started in the Giro. There we got a huge bias. We were all happy, we thought it was nice that he rode in front that last week, another wheelie up the mountain. But actually, he was occasionally ridden off uphill by riders who normally wouldn't ride him off."

He does not view Van der Poel’s performance in Tour de France as praise-worthy but rather considers it drama. "It's just a very difficult year. So then now he can say he's good, and he can tell himself that, but I do think there are question marks,” Dekker said.

He thinks Van der Poel did a big mistake by missing out on multi-day races, which can be disadvantageous for him in this World Championships. "They didn't really have an option, they didn't ride the Tour of Britain, for example. They really had the problem that he couldn't ride a lap. The World Cup is 276 kilometres and has over four thousand altimeters. With the Tour he rode - which wasn't very good and probably didn't give him any morale - it would have been nice if he could have raced for five or six more days," concluded Dekker.