Mathieu Van der Poel puts his sights on the Tour de France next having won a magnificent Paris-Roubaix about a month ago. In addition to the classic Monument on the French pavé, we recall who also won the Milan-San Remo: a fantastic start to the season after last year's back problems. Without to forget the victory in the Cyclocross World Championship after a thrilling head-to-head with Wout Van Aert.
The fact of aiming for the Tour de France (certainly not the general but in stage victories and a few yellow days like in 2021) suggests that there will be no MTB races until July, much less for the following 2 months, given that another great goal of the Dutch champion is the road world championships in Glasgow on August 6th. And, after the Tour de France and the world championships, there will certainly be a need for a recovery period of at least a month.
It's from that terrible fall at the Tokyo Olympics that we do not see Mathieu riding a MTB. The prediction we made regarding the fact that Van Der Poel had not raced any MTB races in 2023 seems to be correct. Now the Dutchman will race two races in Belgium, the Dwars door het Hageland (June 10) and the Tour of Belgium (June 14-18), while the last round before the Tour should be the road race of the National Championships.
Mathieu certainly knows his talent but the Netherlands currently risk taking only one athlete to the Olympic Games if he or Milan Vader don't start picking up important points. But given his great talent, as always he will be able to patch things up even at the last moment: Holland's goal is to be able to bring Milan and Van der Poel to the start of Paris 2024. We recall that one of Van der Poel are precisely the 2024 MTB Olympics.
The next three weeks we will prepare in La Plagne for the Tour. It's still good to do some races to pick up the pace. Both Dwars door het Hageland and the Tour of Belgium are races that I like. With my cyclocross background, I should be able to do well at Dwars door het Hageland. At the Tour of Belgium I will find some guys from our selection for the Tour, including Jasper Philipsen. We'll see what we can do for each other – Mathieu Van der Poel
