The King of the North
Mathieu van der Poel showed us why is he a three-time winner of both the Tour of Flanders and Paris Roubaix - as well as a World Champion –over the opening days of this Tour. The Dutchman set up his teammate Jasper Philipsen for the Stage One win that came along with a Yellow Jersey, capturing it for himself the next day with a fine win over Tadej Pogačar. The high-speed classics nature of the opening stages, with wind, cobbles and twisting roads and crucially, some very tough climbs thrown in for good measure, affected even the mighty Van der Poel.
It was during the sprint into Amiens on Stage 4 that the first signs of Van der Poel’s fatigue became visible. After a series of finishing climbs, VdP was in a group slightly detached from the field, one that contained all the big Yellow Jersey contenders, all of whom the Flying Dutchman outweighed by 20 to 40-pounds. The fact that he was able to haul that large carcass over those climbs with Pogačar and co. is amazing but there was a cost: he lost the sprint to Pogačar. It was a loss born of fatigue – he simply sat down in mid sprint – not of power. Van der Poel kept the Yellow but knew that he would lose it in the Time Trial the next day. His goal was to ride well enough, as he did with his fine Time Trial at the Dauphinè, to keep Yellow within striking distance of a recapture.
His TT was a disaster, Van der Poel lost 1’44”, over 3” a kilometer to the Bullet Train Remco Evenepoel, dropping down to 6th overall. He was clearly tired. However, one does not build a palmares like his by giving in, and of course he went on the attack the next day, following the great efforts of the American Champion Quinn Simmons and Irishman Ben Healy. Van der Poel rode himself into the virtual Yellow Jersey on the stage but, by the end, with the field pressing in and the breakaway splintering, the fatigue hit again, and he began to fade, setting up an excruciating tension as we waited to see if a struggling VdP could hold on for the Yellow. Which he did for one, tiny second. No matter what he does or where he is, Mathieu van der Poel is The Show. It was great stuff, the heart of a true champion fighting with everything he had for us all to see.
He really looked tired the next day with the finish up the Mûr-de-Bretagne, dropped the first time up the climb, losing 1’20” in the process. With two stages for sprinters to follow and the mountains looming, VdP’s days of attack on the Tour seemed to be over, until the last week anyway. But of course, he had other ideas and on Stage 9, the race to Châteauroux – Mark Cavendish City – the second-fastest stage in Tour history, 174-kilometers in three and a half hours (!), a stage buffeted by side winds and other traps, Van der Poel went on the attack from the gun along with suffering teammate Jonas Rickeart, and made the peloton chase him the entire day. He was back in the virtual Yellow at one point, fought on like a lion, and was only caught with 700-meters to go.
It was such a crazy move to race as he did yesterday, redefining the phrase, “throwing caution to the wind.” Yet he did it, put on another Show, another nail biter, another example of one of the greats of cycling history – we can certainly term him that by now – another example of his incredible strength. Mathieu van der Poel has enlivened these opening 10-days of the Tour de France in a marvelous manner, kept them fascinating. It’s no secret that he really doesn’t love the Tour, it’s too long for his combative nature, too many days of just riding to finish, not really racing. But he’s given it his all this year, and what a Show it’s been from the King of the North.