There he is, in the Trocadero stadium next to the Eiffel Tower. As one of the many losers. Mathieu van der Poel tired on Saturday after the finish. The festivities are reserved for Remco Evenepoel, the glorious winner, and Valentin Madouas and Christophe Laporte, the French numbers two and three. Van der Poel no longer has any business in the heart of Paris.
He finished twelfth in the Olympic road race in Paris. A result that brings him nothing. He didn’t spend months training for it. Because after winning the spring classics, this was his big goal of the (late) summer here in Paris. It was a perfect course for him, with the cobblestone climb to the Sacre-Coeur in Montmartre seemingly made for him. He didn’t come for anything less than the gold medal.
Last year’s plan worked
He feels he is good enough to win. The form is good, a result of following the model of last year, when he claimed the world title in Glasgow. This year he largely followed the same schedule. This led to an expectedly lacklustre Tour de France, in which he rode several times for Jasper Philipsen but gave himself no chance of stage wins.
Everything is going well in Paris, but it is not working. In tactical terms, he is outclassed by the French and especially by the Belgians, who have Wout van Aert on their wheel and can launch a counterattack with Remco Evenepoel. And Van der Poel (29) is digging his own grave. After an initial attack in Montmarte, to get ahead of the whole tactical cycle, he was caught by Evenepoel’s counterattack, which proved decisive.
After that, Van der Poel no longer plays a role, a new image for someone who in recent years has always been good when he really wanted to be. From the world title in Glasgow, the cyclocross world championships and the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix. Everything worked. He hardly remained anonymous, as in the deep final on Saturday.
The resignation is audible.
The fact that this is what happened on Saturday is, surprisingly, the main reason for Van der Poel’s resignation on Saturday. During the race, he was able to get used to the fact that he would not win. 37 kilometres, because that was the moment when Van der Poel attacked and had no answer. But even after his race, he basically shrugs his shoulders.
He doesn’t feel “any different than usual” and, besides, “tomorrow is a new day.” “This is a race,” he also says once, to indicate that it’s not so obvious that he’s going to win. It was a remarkably flat response for someone who had perhaps the best chance of his life to become an Olympic champion.
For Van der Poel, the Olympics are not yet a happy combination. Three years ago there was the mountain bike race in Tokyo. This year he skipped that part because he thought he had a chance of winning gold in the road race. In four years’ time in Los Angeles, he said he wants to try mountain biking again. But that’s a long four years.
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