I don’t mean that Pogačar doesn’t have an enormous will to win. After all, he will be only 26 years old when he reaches a century of victories; Merckx didn’t hit that milestone until he was 27. But I think there is one cyclist in the peloton who has an even greater appetite than Pogačar, and that is Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck).
The real “new Cannibal”?
Merckx and Pogačar recorded all their victories in road racing, but the omnivorous Dutchman has been successful in four disciplines. He won seven cyclo-cross world championships, one gravel world championship, and one road world championship (2023), the only male cyclist to win the world title in three different cycling disciplines. And he will be trying to win the MTB world championship after the Tour de France. He has also won two Grand Tour stages and numerous Classics victories, including three wins in both the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix, and Milan–San Remo twice.
According to cyclingarchives.com, van der Poel has registered no fewer than 288 victories across four disciplines in his career. Now that’s what I call a truly hungry rider. His successful quest for the gravel world championship and his current pursuit of the MTB title suggest that he literally wants to win everything – that is, at least one victory in every prize that his incredible skill set allows him to win. That means he will never win a Grand Tour because he is too heavy to climb the big mountains. He has already won some Grand Tour stages, so that hunger has probably been satisfied. But he has never won a Grand Tour jersey. The only one he can win is the Škoda Green Jersey, so I think that will be his goal this year.
Going for Green
This is not an easy proposition since van der Poel is not a sprinter, though he sprints very fast, and because there will be a plethora of great sprinters at the Tour, such as Tim Merlier (Soudal Quick-Step), Jonathan Milan (Lidl-Trek), and last year’s green jersey winner, Biniam Girmay (Intermarché-Wanty). And his Alpecin-Deceuninck team is probably bringing two sprinters to the race, the 2023 Tour Škoda Green Jersey winner, Jasper Philipsen, and Kaden Groves, who has won the Vuelta points classification twice.
Van der Poel will almost certainly be the primary lead-out rider for the team in the bunch sprints, but the points system has been tweaked for this Tour de France to reward a maximum of 50 points not only for the winners of the flat stages, usually a sprinter, but also for the winners of moderate climbing stages, such as stage 4, which features five categorized climbs in the final 50 km, and stage 6, which ends on the Mur-de-Bretagne (2.1 km @ 6.5%, with ramps up to 13.4%).
Van der Poel looked very strong on medium climbs in the recent Critérium du Dauphiné, finishing in the top five in three of the four hilly and medium-mountain stages, and finished second in the points classification, tied with Pogačar on points. The Slovenian was given the title by virtue of having won more stages, but van der Poel announced his ambition. And I think he’s got a great chance to win the Tour Škoda Green Jersey because of his versatility. In riding lead-out, he will be the last rider to drop away when the sprint begins in earnest, but he will be close to the finish line and can easily finish in the top 10 in these stages and thereby pick up green jersey points.
The reluctant superstar
However, Alpecin-Deceuninck sports director Christoph Roodhooft told Sporza recently that the team had not yet decided if the green jersey will be a goal. “We haven’t thought that far yet,” he said. “The first priority will be the bunch sprint on day one. For the non-climbers, it is a more pleasant Tour to go to. We always go with the ambition to win a stage. We are not going to change that, even if that sometimes sounds too moderate an ambition.”
Ironically, van der Poel suggested to numerous publications late last year that he wouldn’t mind skipping the Tour to concentrate on the MTB World Championships. He even went so far as to say that he doesn’t like riding in the Tour. “It’s a race that I don’t really like,” he said. “Apart from trying to win stages and wear the yellow jersey [which he has already accomplished], there’s not much to gain for me in the Tour. I’d rather ride five races in which I’m competing to win than 20 stages in which I’m not competing for the win half the time.”
But his interest would be piqued if a green jersey was the prize. In any case, the team insisted that he go to the Tour. “Whose favorite race is the Tour?” Alpecin-Deceuninck general manager Philip Roodhooft told Het Laatste Nieuws, as reported by cyclinguptodate.com, and ridiculed the idea that the team would go to the Tour de France without its superstar. “Of course, a Giro d’Italia or Vuelta a España is more relaxed,” he said. “But the Tour is the biggest of the three; a stage win there has more impact than in Italy or Spain.”
He went on to say that the race itself would also gain from van der Poel’s presence, especially as it seems to have been laid out with him in mind. “[Race] organizer ASO also benefits from top athletes like Mathieu showing up at the start with ambition,” Roodhooft said. “In that sense, several attractive stages effectively fit his profile perfectly. So do it.”
He’s doing it, and we all win.
