Adrie van der Poel keeps Mathieu on his toes: "You can see he only participated in a few races"

On December 29, the Van der Poel family is already celebrating because Corinne is having her birthday. For Mathieu and Adrie, however, there was nothing else to do on Sunday but to attend the cyclo-cross in Besançon, although - due to their private jet travel- they may be able to attend the party on Sunday evening. Mathieu can do that with the victory in his pocket; his father was in Besançon as a TV analyst for Play Sports with some interesting comments.

Adrie outlined that such a day in the cyclo-cross is anything but just a game. "It's the journey leading up to it, the recon, the warm-up, the race, the cool down, and the whole ceremony for the top three. Doping control and so on, so you're in full swing all day anyway. And then you have to get on the bus and go home, after which the story starts again at the next race. The race is the least of everything: you're just busy for an hour. But everything around it makes it intense."

And then the races follow each other in quick succession. "Mathieu feels that he has done five races in seven days. His first cyclo-cross was great, but after that, you could already see the difference when he rode against fresher riders. We noticed that with Laurens Sweeck in Loenhout, the differences are smaller. So then, it's up to Mathieu to stay focused. But it's an exhausting period. The spotlight? Mathieu grew up with the spotlights, so he has learned to deal with that."

"If I can speak for Mathieu for a moment, I do think he will enjoy returning to France," Arie told me. "But maybe it means even more to the French than to him. If Wout van Aert had been here, you might have had three thousand more visitors. People here want to see riders who have won stages in the Tour de France. Then you are welcomed warmly, and you are, so to speak, 'God in France.' That has always been the case."

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Adrie van der Poel: "You can see he only participated in a few races"

For now - and also in Besançon - things are seemingly going smoothly. Van der Poel senior, however, keeps him on his toes. "You can tell by how he rides that he has only participated in a few races. It's staying focused from start to finish. Mathieu wants to do everything perfectly and well, but the difference between a good and bad lap is also so twenty seconds. You have to be in the race from the start and do your own thing; then, you won't do anything crazy. If you freak out, you pay for it in cash. Especially here in Besançon."

Yet there again, it was mission accomplished. "I think this was one of the toughest cyclo-cross races this year, and it demanded a lot from the athletes. You saw that in the first round, he couldn't quite do his thing, but now he enters the top eight, and then he gets to be on the front row as well,' said Adrie, who would like to see more cyclo-cross races like this. 'I think Mathieu would have preferred to ride this cyclo-cross in 25 degrees, but I think he liked it quite a bit. We miss these courses, with this surface, in Belgium and the Netherlands. Then the cyclo-cross riders show themselves," father Van der Poel concluded his story.

Read also

Toon Aerts finishes second behind Mathieu van der Poel: "A few days ago, I was in tears"

Van der Poel had extra motivation in France and showed the audience his true cyclo-cross skills

According to Wuyts, there’s no one better than Van der Poel: "If you doubt it, take off your blindfold"

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