Making Sense of Mathieu van der Poel's Place Among the All-Time Greats
While not yet the đ, does MvdP have a shot at đ-dom?
Sports fans love a good đ (Greatest of All-Time) debate, and why should cyclocross be any different.
Back when I wrote my preview of Elite Womenâs Worlds, I mentioned that the winner of the race would have implications for a forthcoming Modern-Era Great Power Rankings Bill and I have been musing about. The numbers for those rankings are still being crunched, but after watching Mathieu van der Poel win his fourth World Championship at age 26, I got to thinking about not just his standing in the modern era, but how he fits in among the all-time greats.
Watching Van der Poel race, it is impossible to not have the thought, âWho was ever better than this guy?â Recency bias is a thing, so since the Bulletin has not yet been able to purchase a time machine to go back at watch some of the sportâs legends, it only made sense to consult the record books and available stories to see if other athletes have had Van-der-Poelian success at a young age. Have there been other young cyclocross wunderkinds who have racked up âchips in their early 20s and did any of them face situations where their careers were concurrent with another all-time great.
A look back through the annals of cyclocross at 71 years of world championships told an interesting, if not somewhat unexpected, story.
A Trip Through Cyclocross History
For the yet-to-be-released Modern-Era Great Power Rankings, we loosely defined a âmodern eraâ of cyclocross beginning in 1996, in part to keep things simple and in part because long-time fans of the sport are likely to remember many of the big names. It is a lot easier to compare Sven and Mathieu and Wout than it is to speculate about the riding style of Renato Longo versus Roger Rondeauxâat least for most of us.
Not much of a spoiler alert, but looking at the modern era for men, the choice came down to Sven versus Mathieu. The consistent star who racked up classification after classification versus the young phenom who ⌠at least at a young age ⌠has dominated the regular season but like Sven has had some trouble bringing home those âchips. There is a strong argument to made that Mathieu is already above Sven, and it is all but certain that when his cyclocross career is over, Van der Poel will be the greatest male rider most of us have ever seen play the sport.
The best of this generationâand probably the one before, and maybe the one before thatâto get some sense of Van der Poelâs potential compared to those who reside in the pantheon of greatness, it makes sense to see what his potential is compared to other all-time greats.
Right now, Van der Poel has four Worlds titles, which ties him Roland Liboton for fifth all-time. Andre Dufraisse, Renato Longo, and Albert Zweifel are tied for second with five, and Belgian Erik De Vlaeminck sits at the top of the hill (tied with Marianne Vos) with seven Worlds titles.
Among the six men with four or more titles, Van der Poel joins Liboton, Longo, and De Vlaeminck in starting young. Both Van der Poel and De Vlaeminck won titles at age 20, the Italian Longo won at age 21 in 1959, and Liboton won at 22 in 1980. The Swissman Zweifel won his first âchip at 26 in 1976, and Frenchman Dufraisse was the latest starter, getting his first title at age 27 in 1954. (Zweifel also gets the Sven award for bouncing back and winning his fifth title at age 36 in 1986 after a 7-year drought)
While De Vlaeminck had Longo on one side of his reignâmore on why it ended in a bitâbut if there was a time where there was a Mathieu v. Wout situation, it was from 1959 to 1967 when the Italian Longo squared off against German Rolf Wolfshohl. During that 9-year period, Rolf and Renato won 8 of 9 Worlds titles, with De Vlaeminck interloping for the other one.
1959 - Longo takes the CX Heavyweight belt from Andre Dufraisse (4 titles)
1960 & 1961 - Wolfshohl goes back-to-back
1962 - Longo is BACK wearing the belt
1963 - Wolfshohl
1964, 1965, 1967 - Longo makes it a cool 5, with Wolfshohl finishing 2nd in â65 and â67
Wolfshohl would podium at Worlds a total of 12 times in his career. Longo was more of an all-of-nothing rider, with a total of 7 podiums.
The rivalry between Longo and Wolfshohl was a bit of an outlier in the first half of recorded cyclocross history (ie: since the first UCI World Championships were held in 1950), as the history of Worlds winners had a bit of a championship-belt feel. Thirty-two of the first 37 world championships were won by a total of 7 riders and streaks were not uncommon, including:
Roger Rondeaux (France) - 3 straight from 1951 to 1953
Andre Dufraisse (France) - 5 straight from 1954 to 1958
Erik De Vlaeminck (Belgium) - 6 straight from 1968 to 1973
Albert Zweifel (Switzerland) - 4 straight from 1976 to 1979
Roland Liboton (Belgium) - 3 straight from 1982 to 1984
These five as well as two others had single-year wins sprinkled in here and there. Your trivia answers for one-off winners during that 37-year stretch? Frenchman Jean Robic in 1950, Albert Van Damme in 1974, Roger De Vlaeminck in 1975, Dutchman Hennie Stamsnijder in 1981, and German Klaus Peter Thaler in 1985 (he also won again in 1987).
A surprisingly complete list of all Worlds podium finishers dating back to 1950 is available on Wikipedia.
The đ and the đ To Be?
While I always enjoy a good trip through history, when looking for a comp for Mathieu van der Poel, it was hard to not keep looking at Erik De Vlaeminck and those 7 world championships. Like Van der Poel, De Vlaeminck racked up early Worlds titles, winning his 7th by age 27. And while Van der Poel is behind by two yearsâDe Vlaeminck won #6 at age 26âVan der Poel seems to share some traits with the Belgian legend from a half-century ago.
You know an athlete has achieved a rarified air when old-timers start telling stories about them that stretch the bounds of credulity. Erik De Vlaeminck passed away in 2015, and the first line of his obituary read, âIt was said that the cyclist Erik De Vlaeminck was such a skilled bike handler that he could ride along a railway rail for kilometers at a time without slipping off.â
Legendary. And is that far off from what we will be telling our kids we saw Mathieu van der Poel do on the bike? Maybe a bit, but time tends to embellish all stories, so who knows where our memories of what Van der Poel is doing right now will be.
If you havenât already done so, I recommend hopping over to the Independent obituary of De Vlaeminck for a few. His story is equal parts incredible and incredibly tragic.
While Van der Poel grew up as cycling royalty, De Vlaeminck âgrew up in a trailer camp in a family of traveling clothiers in eastern Flanders.â He did, however, have a cycling brother in Roger, who won the 1974 cyclocross World Championship and was an accomplished road racer.
De Vlaeminck won his first Worlds âchip at age 20 in 1966 and then went on to win 6-straight from age 22 to age 27. He also had a 1970-71 season where he won 32 of 34 races, which is a standard Van der Poelâs 32 of 34 in 2018-19 and 24 of 25 in 2019-20 are compared against. Also, interestingly, where Van der Poel has struggled against rival Wout van Aert at Worlds, De Vlaeminck struggled at Belgian Nationals, only winning the race four times in eight tries when he was at the peak of his dominance.
While Van der Poel has the brother angle and winning at a young age covered, hopefully comparisons with De Vlaeminck will stop there. De Vlaeminck did not race Worlds in 1974, not because he was injured, but because he was in trouble with the law. De Vlaeminck developed an amphetamine addiction and was convicted of falsifying prescriptions for the drug and for his involvement in a hit-and-run accident. De Vlaeminck would return to racing and manage a bronze at Worlds in 1977, but it appears the closing stanzas of his career are a victim of what-could-have-been.
With Van der Poel indicating he plans to continue racing cyclocross in the coming years, it is De Vlaeminckâs 7 world championships he will be compared against as he ages into the latter half of his 20s. Friend of the Bulletin Nico Dick asked Van der Poel about that magic number after Worlds this year, âThose seven from De Vlaeminck? I'm not working on that yet, but it could become a goal in the long run. However, I realize that I still have a long way to go for that.â
De Vlaeminckâs career shows that nothing is given in sport, but at his current trajectoryâVan der Poel could win his 8th title at age 30âchances are good that Van der Poel will have the palmares to stake his claim as the greatest male cyclocross racer of all-time. And the best part is when Georges Van Aert is dominating the world of cycling in 20 years, we can stroke our chins and regale the kids with stories of the exploits of Mathieu van der Poel at the peak of his powers.