"Mathieu has cycled on the mountain bike twice" but can van der Poel take win on MTB return this weekend?

This Sunday, the 25th of May, will see the return of Mathieu van der Poel to XCO. In Nové Mesto, where he and riders like Tom Pidcock frequently take part in, the Alpecin-Deceuninck rider will begin to build on an attempt to capture the rainbow jersey in the discipline.

“Mathieu has had a really good rest period. The past three weeks have been good in terms of training volume. On Thursday he trained here in the Czech Republic, the days before that were a bit less," Christoph Roodhoft shared with Wielerflits.

"But he is doing pretty well at the moment, if you look at his preparation for the Tour de France. Mathieu has cycled on the mountain bike twice: once a long endurance training and once a shorter training with some intervals. Thursday morning was the third time, when he explored the course here in Nové Město”.

Van der Poel is a rider with a lot of history in the discipline. He has been World Champion on three others, so it could be said that this would be only his fourth best, but he is eager to pursuit a big goal. In 2019 he won almost all events he took part in, and in 2021 he built up towards the Paris Olympic Games - where he then crashed out of the race. The Dutchman equally crashed out of the 2023 World Championships, and then raced the Paris Olympics Test Event but with a very modest result. He ultimately rode only the road race in Paris.

For the past year and a half, he's rarely picked up the mountain bike, until recently with a couple of training rides. “That’s very little of course, but we have to pick up the thread again somewhere. We’re trying to do that this weekend. You just have to start somewhere again. This seemed like a good moment for that. Then we’ll be back on track and we can see what that brings us or can bring us.”

Due to his crashes there is concern over the material, but not within the Alpecin camp. “Not much has changed there. In terms of tires, we’ve gone from Maxxis to Pirelli, that’s actually the only big difference. Is there any healthy tension? Well, that’s actually not too bad. In principle, every result this weekend is fine. Of course, entertainment alone is not enough, but it does come down to the fact that in Nové Město we’ll mainly get back into it and see where we stand," Roodhoft concluded.