Mathieu van der Poel won’t race mountain bikes this year
Dutch star takes a break from dirt but still has eyes on Paris
Photo by:
Bartek Wolinski / Red Bull Content Pool
Mathieu van der Poel continues to be absent from the World Cup mountain bike start line this season. While the Dutch phenom never raced a full XCO calendar, he confirmed during a Giro d’Italia media session that he won’t be racing mountain bikes at all this year.
MvdP isn’t done with dirt, though. While fans won’t get to see a replay of last year’s van der Poel-Pidcock showdown in Nove Mesto this weekend, it could still happen. Just not until 2023.
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The reason? Well, until Tuesday, van der Poel was leading the Giro d’Italia. From there, the Alpecin-Fenix rider will target a return to yellow at the Tour de France. Then there’s 2022 road world championships in Wollongong, Australia. The later is part of the Dutchman’s multi-year plan to win rainbow stripes in cyclocross, mountain bike and road racing.
All in, van der Poel is just too busy to squeeze in mountain bike races.
The road to Paris starts in 2023
That will change next year. Since riders have to qualify to participate in the Olympic Games, van der Poel will, apparently, spend much of 2023 on dirt.
“In 2023, the intention is to get back into the mountain bike routine,” van der Poel told Wielerflits, adding “I want to work towards the Olympic Games in Paris”
This could signal a change in the 27-year-old’s approach to his dreams of Olympic gold. Going into Tokyo, van der Poel mixed road and mountain biking. He even started the Tour de France less than a month before the Tokyo Games.
That approach didn’t exactly pan out. Van der Poel crashed hard on the controversial Sakura Drop and his rival in road, cross and mountain bikes, Tom Pidcock, won the Olympic XCO.
If van der Poel gets his road objectives out of the way in 2022, he could spend more of summer 2023 racing on dirt.
