"With Mathieu, everything is focused on the World Championship" - Father Adrie assures van der Poel's main goal for the winter

Alpecin-Deceuninck has revealed Mathieu van der Poel's cyclocross calendar for the 2024-2025 season yesterday, and it features 11 races. They begin on the 22nd Decemeber with Zonhoven and will be a build-up towards the Liévin World Championships where he will seek a record-matching seventh rainbow jersey.

In the Christmas block, it is rather packed, with the Dutchman barely missing out on a single race. Adrie van der Poel didn't take part in the deciding, and now comments on the choice to Het Nieuwsblad: “I would have done about 70 percent of it. It is just nicely balanced. It must have been a well-considered choice to do a lot of cross-country in a short period. It is often a day of cross-country, a day of rest, and then you don’t have to train much in between. So you can bridge that period very well".

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Both he and van Aert opted not to race the Superprestige Diegem, however besides that we will have one of them on every other race of the Christmas block from the 22nd December onwards. Adrie believes that this more packed schedule is a response to the bad weather that is often upon Belgium at this time of year, which can make it difficult to do some serious training.

“If you leave four or five days between two cyclocross races, then you really have to train extra, and the weather conditions can sometimes put a stop to that in Belgium," he explains. "Now you don't have to take that into account at all. I leave that to the Roodhooft brothers and to Mathieu himself."

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He is happy that both van der Poel and van Aert continue to race cyclocross every winter, despite their clear main ambitions being on the road. "It's nice, and that goes for Wout too, that they each stay in cyclocross in their own way. Cyclocross helped make them great. They owe a lot to that sport and I think this is a way to say thank you to the sport".

This 11-race calendar for the Alpecin rider will be, once again, looking to fully prepare the World Championships that take place in France in early February, before he takes some rest and prepares for the road season. "With Mathieu, everything is focused on the World Championship, of course with the underlying idea that the spring on the road is super important again. But that doesn't change compared to previous years," van der Poel concluded.

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