Mathieu van der Poel’s Strava shows he’s doing some serious training for the pink jersey

The Giro d’Italia starts soon, and Alpecin-Fenix’s Mathieu van der Poel is clearly prepping hard for it. On Friday at a training camp in Spain, he was doing some serious efforts. Multiple hill intervals for a minute up a climb that has a similar gradient to the opening stage, a 195 km ride from Budapest to Visegrád,

On Saturday, MvdP did some solid work on his time trial bike. It just so happens that stage two is a 9.2 km time trial. It’s clear that the cyclocross star thinks he can snag the pink jersey, either in the first day or second. If he does get it, how long can he hold on to it?

At the 2021 Tour de France, many thought that van der Poel would lose his yellow jersey at the stage five time trial. Van der Poel rode brilliantly in his longest career race against the clock to keep the yellow jersey by eight seconds over the Slovenian and ultimate winner. Tadej Pogačar.

The 105th Giro d’Italia starts on Friday in Hungary and will include 51,000 m of climbing, as well as two time trials.

You can watch this year’s Giro on GCN+