IN DEPTH: MATHIEU VAN DER POEL
Mathieu van der Poel won a stage and wore the yellow jersey on his Tour debut. Procycling looks at his huge impact on the race, and what sets him apart
The Dutchman won a stage and wore the yellow jersey. We look at a stunning Tour debut.
We use the phrase ‘animating the race’ quite a bit in cycling journalism, to describe a kind of stirring, a moment of excitement, rather like uncorking a bottle of champagne or whacking a wasp nest with a broomstick. Beneath the surface of the term lurks the implication that a bike race is often static, something that requires a certain activation, a tension needing release. In the modern day peloton, that’s perhaps more true than not. For years, we have seen the increased professionalisation of cycling. Once a sport of individual glory, now it’s more a game of brinkmanship and marginal gains backed by technological, nutritional, and tactical arms races.
Cyclists ride to control the race for their leaders, who often wait in the wings for hundreds of kilometres until their decisive moment arrives and they are delivered neatly on the doorstep of others.
Mathieu van der Poel does not ride bikes like that. Mathieu van der Poel is the broomstick holder to the peloton’s proverbial wasp nest. He’s a chaos agent in the lull of the processional punching of timecards. Sometimes his signature moves - long-range digs at the start of a sprint that force the others to chase, daring solo breakaways in one-day races, attacking often for what seems to be the hell of it - don’t always fit the tacticians’ bill; but they are always spectacular, and when they pay off, especially so.
There are plenty of exciting riders in our current World Tour peloton, and with the rise of aggressive GC contenders like Tadej Pogacar, who aren’t content to let moments go unseized, we could perhaps be seeing the beginning of a new, more dynamic era of cycling, an antithesis to the ‘train’ era begun by US Postal and perfected by Sky. If Pogacar’s a modern day cannibal, and the term panache is better lent to riders like Julian Alaphilippe, whose impulsivity is always coupled with an element of performance and a dash of emotion, Mathieu van der Poel is something else. He’s something he’s always been: a romantic. It runs in his family.
At the grand départ in Brest, before all of the insane, dubious, spectacular events that would come to define this Tour as one of chaos and carnage, the Alpecin-Fenix boys lined up, not in their usual navy and red kits, but in purple and gold. It’s an homage to the Mercier team, one of the most iconic institutions of French cycling, and specifically to its helmsman, Raymond Poulidor. In that kit, on
stage, speaking in soft, modulated French, Mathieu van der Poel is the spitting image of his grandfather: square-jawed, thin-lipped, with sunken but sparkling eyes. For such a mischievous subject on the bike, off it Van der Poel is rather neutral and detached, almost demure. One suspects he’s thinking about racing even when he’s standing still. He is the son of Adrie van der Poel and the grandson of Poulidor. It’s what he was born to do.
Poulidor was always a romantic figure in his own right. In the 12 Tours he completed, he never wore the yellow jersey, though he came close a number of times. He always seemed to lose out to someone that much stronger - Anquetil, later Merckx, names that are forever enshrined as the legends of the sport. But Poulidor was also a legend in his own right, a beloved tragic figure who was never really that tragic, because he simply was doing what he loved with his life: being a racer, the travel, the thrill of it. There’s an oft-quoted line Poulidor gave in an interview in 1992: “I thought what was happening to me was already marvellous enough. I never thought of winning. Never, ever, did I get up in the morning with the idea of winning!” Hence, the eternal second. The term was always one of devotion.
In terms of the drive to win, Poulidor and his grandson couldn’t be further removed from one another. In the saddle Van der Poel becomes a different person. He has an aura of distinction, of deadly competency, of seriousness. At kilometre zero in Brest the next day, still clad in that special kit, there’s no soft-eyed Poulidorian cheeriness on Van der Poel’s face, but that doesn’t mean he’s not having fun. Whenever he does anything, it’s clear that Van der Poel loves and lives for cycling.
His aggressive style of riding may seem quixotic or unconventional now, but it is a very traditional way to race a bike - as an individual, a rogue. What’s interesting about such a thing is that Van der Poel isn’t going up against a bunch of other, atomised individuals, like his grandfather battled Anquetil in the mountains in the fifties. He’s going up against some of the most formidable team formations seen in cycling history - the Ineos train, the Quick Step leadout men, the full cadre of Jumbo-Visma. To go off on a flyer in the face of such enemies is the definition of the romantic spirit, and the best part is, these Goliaths take our little Dutch David deadly seriously. They have to.
AGENT OF CHAOS
The first week of the 2021 Tour is as defined by Van der Poel as it is by the crashes and chaos. Everyone is antsy. Everyone starts at kilometre zero, on the same time. To take the yellow jersey on the first stage is the goal of every rider. However, despite all the fanfare and all of the special Mercier jerseys, the first day is not for Van der Poel - perhaps the pressure is too high. Perhaps there’s too much history swirling about, mingling with the present, amplifying the nerves. He loses his leadout’s wheel with 3.5 km to go and spends a whole lot of energy just to get back on. Positioning, admittedly, has never been his
strong suit. With 2.3 kilometres to go, Alaphilippe launches himself. He doesn’t come back. When the camera swings to Van der Poel after the stage, his head is buried in his elbows, draped over the handlebars. It becomes very clear that securing the yellow jersey means a very great deal to him, perhaps more than anything else.
On day two, however, it happens. It’s a classic Van der Poel move, with 750m to go on the slopes of the Côte de Mûr-de-Bretagne. Sonny Colbrelli launches first but Van der Poel calls his bluff, uses him as a springboard to launch himself further out than any reasonable man would go, but Van der Poel, despite doing unreasonable things, is reasonable in that he knows himself, knows that he can sustain this kind of effort, knows that his opponents will be too busy marking each other to snag him back. It works wonderfully.
Van der Poel is very cool and collected in interviews, with the press, after races, even after winning. He’s self-assured - not arrogant, just realistic. And yet, the reality of being presented the yellow jersey, the jersey his recently deceased grandfather never wore, on the second day of his first ever Tour, is too much emotion for him to withstand, would be too much for any man to bear. Tears stream down his face; he is so moved by the sport, its legends, its history, and where he now fits within that narrative. In his post-race press conference, he said that he knew that stage two was his “last chance” to secure the jersey, as the next stages were sprint stages not suited to him. The tears, then, were partly those of relief. In them, cycling was revealed to be what it is, a beautiful sport of interwoven stories regaled through generations, stories of triumph, defeat, perseverance, redemption, courage, strength, and in this case, even love.
The next day, Van der Poel would put in his dig in the leadout train for Tim Merlier, successfully too, on a stage that is better remembered for the crashes that took out the likes of Jack Haig and mortally wounded Primož Roglicč and Geraint Thomas. After that stage, the race was changed irrevocably, and arguably for the worse. Van der Poel in yellow, working for others, was maybe the only good thing to come out of that terrible, fateful day.
Still, it’s one thing to secure the jersey, it’s another entirely to hold on to it. Van der Poel held off Alaphilippe by a margin of just eight seconds, barely daylight. Everyone expected him to be out of yellow by the end of the time trial, including, per a press conference, Van der Poel himself. What actually happens, is perhaps one of the best stories of the entire race. It’s a classic moment of pure Van der Poelian chutzpah and drive.
THE SPEED OF SOUND
I can still remember that day rather well, because I was standing outside like a donkey in the rain, practicing my rider interview skills on anyone who was willing to entertain me. For the most of the day, I was alone out there, being joined occasionally by my colleagues when the specialists rolled through - Bjerg, Küng, Bissegger. I got to the stage
early that morning in order to watch the riders do their recons, and I recall seeing Van der Poel pass on his time trial bike, and when I saw him, I was convinced of his raw power, his eyes turned up towards the sky as though looking for answers. Time trialling is a pose that’s not unlike praying - or pouncing, depending on who you ask. In a second he was gone, the whomp whomp of his disc wheel marking the seconds he was ever there. Sound is slower than light.
REDEFINING THE SPORT
Van der Poel infamously does things on the fly. That’s his style. Impulse is his muse and he follows it guilelessly. One recalls his performance in Kuurne-BrusselsKuurne, when he went out in a break with 80km to go and lasted until the final kilometre. Don’t ask me who won that race - I’d have to look it up, but I remember Van der Poel. One also recalls stage 5 of this year’s Tirreno-Adriatico, when Van der Poel attacked 50km out with a rice cake in his mouth simply because he was bored and cold. That race is actually a good metaphor for the time trial, because in a way he did the same thing that day as he did in the Tour - he managed to somehow miraculously hold off the looming beast of Tadej Pogačcar.
Van der Poel’s flair for subverting the norms and expectations of contemporary cycling is all well and good when he’s in a peloton of 100 plus riders. But in a time trial, well, that’s something else entirely. The only person he has to compete with is himself, and that’s enough to suffocate some men, to paralyse them. There’s no one to surprise but oneself.
The night before the time trial, which happens to be the longest one Van der Poel has ever ridden, he goes to his management and demands what is probably the biggest cram session in all of cycling history, on the topics of aerodynamics, effort management and positioning. This is something we all learn after the fact. For now, it’s common expectation that stage 5 is the day where Pogačcar will take his rightful place on the throne.
The day of, it’s raining and the wind is changing constantly, at least for the first third of the stage. This knocks some rather big contenders out of contention. Stefan Küng stays in the hot seat for a considerable amount of time and is expected to remain there the rest of the day. Roglicč, despite being half mummified by his injuries on stage 3, manages to ride to seventh, his team-mate Jonas Vingegaard offering the first glimpses of his podium-winning form by finishing third. And then, Pogačcar demolishes them all, taking 18 seconds away from a visibly shaken Küng. It’ll take a miracle to hold Pogacčar off from the maillot jaune. In fact, no one even thinks it’ll be close, seeing as this is the discipline Van der Poel is least experienced with for the simple reason that it does not excite him as much as the other disciplines do. In the mixed zone, as soon as Pogacčar crosses the line, there are mutters of “Tour’s over” and “Well, that’s that.”
But then, Van der Poel does something extraordinary. He tucks himself atop his bike, evens out the smooth curve of his back, and flies. It’s the time trial of his life. That’s Van der Poel for you - one midnight cram session and suddenly an
But then, Mathieu van der Poel does something extraordinary. He tucks himself atop his bike, evens out the smooth curve of his back, and flies. It’s the time trial of his life
entire discipline is within his reach. All he has to do is try.
Eyes are glued to the screens in the mixed zone, and even I, the most romanticism-poisoned person in all of cycling can’t believe what I’m seeing. The time gap for the yellow jersey shrinks and expands in the single digits as Van der Poel nears the finish, pumping away, not panicking, just riding hard. Somebody lets out a swear and that’s when we know - he’s done it. He’s held off Pogacar by a margin of just eight seconds. No one knows how he squeezed them out. Was it through some small adjustment of form? Some newly applied pedalling technique? Was it the extra watts powered by spite, by desire, by the yellow jersey itself and the confidence it brings? The answer is probably quite simple: Van der Poel just wanted to keep winning. He sensed he could hold on, so he did. It’s a testament to his immense talent, to the respect he has for the race and its symbolism by not relinquishing himself to a failure everyone else seemingly proscribed him to.
UNFINISHED BUSINESS
Mathieu van der Poel would lose the jersey as soon as the mountains kicked up on the stage to Le GrandBornand, and he would quit before the first rest day in order to train for the Olympics. Even though Van der Poel never made it to Paris, he’s directly responsible for, as we say, animating the race, for not just one day, but the entire first week. One could reasonably assume that, were it not for his unpredictability, his propensity for sudden detonation, the peloton wouldn’t have been so damn skittish for the first three days. In this and many ways, the 2021 Tour is unimaginable without his antics. But to an even broader point, Without the Van der Poels of the peloton, cycling wouldn’t be cycling. Without the history and the tears and the uneasy excitement and the sheer, pure fun of a guy, who, just like his father and his grandfather before him, loves riding a bike more than anything else in the world, this story would be unwritable, forgettable, and yes, more than a little bit unromantic.