The (Mostly Good) and (Recently Bad) of Mathieu and Wout's July to Remember
MvdP provides ALL THE FEELS and Wout does ALL THE THINGS, even if Monday’s MTB race fun sponged the narrative
We here at the Bulletin love stories and narratives. Races are just races, but if they can be put in a larger context, that gives them more weight, more heft, more draw.
Fortunately in cyclocross, nearly all significant racing takes place on the weekend, so there is less pressure to make sense of and communicate THE NARRATIVE because things rarely change during the week. However, with the Olympic cycling events scheduled in rapid succession at the start of the 32nd Olympiad, the narrative can change quickly, and whoa boy did it change quickly in the on-going saga of Mathieu and Wout.
Our story starts a month hence at the Tour de France and then heads 9,706 kilometers east to Tokyo for the 2021 Olympics.
Wout van Aert wasted little time making his name ring out in 2019 when he made his Tour debut in 2019, and after his instant success, fans turned their eyes toward Van der Poel’s inevitable entry to the sport’s biggest event. Alpecin-Fenix’s finish atop the European Tour standings in 2020 guaranteed that Van der Poel’s team would be touring across France this July, but with the Olympics taking place this week in Tokyo, it was not a given the sport’s most captivating rider would get his first chance to compete as part of the legendary peloton.
In recent years, Van der Poel has dived head-first (Ed. Note: OMG I WROTE THIS ON SATURDAY DID I JINX MVDP??) into mountain biking, racing full World Cup campaigns in 2018 and 2019 with the then-2020 Tokyo Olympics as a target. Although he has “struggled” this season in the dirt (and by struggled we mean winning the short-track races and finishing 7th and 2nd in the XCO races), the rescheduling of the Olympic Games to 2021 did not change his aspirations for Olympic gold. What the rescheduling did do, however, was put his Tour debut in doubt.
Van der Poel, perhaps with a little prodding from his team and sponsors, quickly made the decision to race in the Tour this year, meaning the date with destiny between the two superstars whose careers have been inextricably linked was inevitable.
ALL OF THE FEELS … and a Little Controversy … from Van der Poel
Mathieu van der Poel’s familial story is probably familiar to Bulletin readers at this point. Son of Adrie, Tour de France stage winner and cyclocross world champion, and grandson of Raymond Poulidor, the famed “Eternal Second.” Poulidor, who raced in the shadow of Jacque Antequil, finished second in the Tour GC three times and never, even for one day, wore the yellow jersey.
Now, in the cyclocross world, you’re either a Wout person or a Mathieu person. It just is what it is. Wout has his humanity, personality, and hair; Mathieu his sheer talent and incredible bike exploits. Against that backdrop, we can sometimes see Van der Poel as a bit stoic, or perhaps even robotic, when we are gawking at his ease on the bike.
However, Van der Poel has made no secret he was close with his grandfather, and when Poulidor passed away in November 2019, Van der Poel took an emotional win at World Cup Tabor just three days after his grandfather’s death. When Van der Poel announced he would start the Tour, it was hard to escape the weight of Poulidor’s legacy on his shoulders. With the Olympics—and Tadej Pogacar—still looming large, winning the Tour in 2021 was out of the question, but winning a stage or two and maybe even grabbing the yellow jersey was very much on Van der Poel’s mind.
In the days before the Tour, Van der Poel’s Alpecin-Fenix team dropped a video of the team’s riders wearing a purple and gold team jersey paying homage to the Mercier jerseys Poulidor wore during his years as a professional. The jerseys were originally slated for the team presentation only, but the day before the start of the 2021 Tour, the UCI, that most benevolent of organizations, granted the team permission to wear them during Stage 1.
The team presentation was one thing, but seeing those jerseys in a race given ALL THE FEELS—that was cool.
Julian Alaphillippe won Stage 1, but Stage 2 … OMG, all the feels.
Mathieu van der Poel is MATHIEU VAN DER POEL in part because of his ability to do seemingly superhuman things. One need to look no further than a duel with Nino Schurter in his second-ever mountain bike World Cup, Amstel Gold 2019, his narrow win against Van Aert at the 2020 Tour de Flanders, or his 4 cyclocross world championships at age 26 to know the Dutch phenom is … phenomenal.
But … however … such accomplishments have not been accomplished at the TOUR DE FRANCE. Well, yet.
After a very Van der Poelian attack up the first passage of the Mur de Bretagne inside 20km to go, Van der Poel again attacked with less than 1km to go and took the win in solo fashion. As he gestured to the sky to honor Poulidor, it was hard to not have some feels about what he had accomplished. Van der Poel had vowed to win a stage to honor Poulidor, and he did so in emphatic fashion.
Just by the math, it becomes more difficult for non-Lil’-Pidders-sized non-climbers to take the yellow jersey as the stages start to tick by. While Van der Poel was making his 800-meter dash to the finish, he also knew he was chasing not only a stage win but his best chance at taking the yellow jersey and achieving something his beloved and decorated grandfather was never able to do.
It took a few minutes after the race, but Van der Poel then found out his solo attack gave him a winning margin worthy of the yellow jersey. He broke down during his post-race interview, where he explained what the win meant: “It’s something special if you can wear the yellow jersey once in your career and it would be even nicer if my grandfather was still here to see it,” he said. “I would have loved to be in the Tour start village with him but it’s a bit too late for that to happen.”
While we aspire for journalistic neutralism here at the Bulletin, we are human. And while I have made little secret about being on Team Wout, folks, there were a lot of feels after that Stage 2 win. Knowing how close Van der Poel was with his grandfather and knowing he entered the Tour looking to win a stage to honor his late grandfather, to see Van der Poel overcome by emotion knowing he would be wearing the yellow jersey—damn. Talk about the Tear de France.
Van der Poel would go on to wear the yellow jersey for a full week, finally relinquishing it following Stage 8, where he finished 21 minutes behind stage winner Dylan Teuns. With yellow gone and the Olympics now a week closer, Van der Poel made the decision to abandon the Tour and being his personal road to Tokyo. The decision made sense—why ride out the rest of the Tour and hinder your shot at a once-in-four-years event?—but the decision was not without its detractors, including arguably the sport’s greatest hero Eddy Merckx.
“I couldn’t do it [quit after one week],” Merckx told Sporza in Belgium. “If you start a race, it’s not a goal to leave it. Otherwise, you have to prepare for the Games in a different way. [Quitting] does not benefit cycling. Van der Poel himself is asking for such a full schedule. Nobody forces him to do all that. The Tour de France is the biggest race of the year and in cycling and I think it’s a pity.”
There is a good argument to be made that Merckx has a point, but with the weirdness of the Olympics being postponed to 2021, I personally think Van der Poel deserves a pass for what he accomplished in honor of his late grandfather. I will take the feels over some unwritten rule of the sport any day.
Wout Does ALL THE THINGS … Well, Maybe Most of the Things
While Van der Poel entered the 2021 Tour looking to snag a stage and maybe even don the yellow, Wout Van Aert entered the event as he did in 2020: looking to serve as a lieutenant for Jumbo-Visma GC contender Primov Roglic and maybe hunt some stages where practicable.
Van Aert did quite well in that role in 2020. He won sprints in Stages 5 and 7 and then finished 3rd in Stage 11. He also presaged one of his accomplishments in this year’s Tour by leading the Jumbo-Visma train up the Grand Colombier climb and in turn cracking defending champion Egan Bernal. Things were going great for Jumbo-Visma and Van Aert, with Roglic in the yellow until the famed Stage 20 time trial where Tadej Pogacar crushed his countryman’s soul with a dominant win in the solo ride. To say Van Aert and his teammates entered the 2021 Tour with unfinished business is an understatement.
Cycling seems to rarely crack through to the mainstream media, but when it does, it is usually when bad things happen. In the case of the Tour, that usually means crashes. And hoo boy, did Stage 1 of the 2021 Tour have a weird one.
After the 2020 race was conducted in a fanless fashion thanks to the COVID pandemic, Stage 1 suggested the fans who returned were a bit rusty when it comes to not getting hit by speeding riders. In a move that is now famous, a woman holding a cardboard sign reading “Allz Opi-Omi” mugged for the camera a bit too long and took out Tony Martin and a good part of the Jumbo-Visma train.
If you were like me, your first thought was IS WOUT OK? (He was) Fortunately for the team, Roglic also escaped major injury, while Martin likely had to make liberal use of Tegaderm. I’m not saying that the Bulletin believes in omens and all that supernatural stuff, but the Allez Opi-Omi lady crash was a bad omen for the snakebit Jumbo-Visma squad.
Two days later, riding in the peloton with 10km left to go, Roglic crashed. He finished the stage, but he was already chasing nearly a minute behind Pogacar. Less than a week later, Roglic was out of the Tour due to the injuries he suffered. With Pogacar taking control during Stages 8 and 9, Jumbo-Visma was without a GC contender and Van Aert was free to take a few more stage-hunting risks.
What transpired was nothing short of legendary … and meme-worthy. While those two accomplishments are seemingly contradictory, Van Aert did them in such a fashion that they both totally make sense.
Van Aert’s success in his first two Tours came primarily in sprint stages, but he has also shown himself to be an accomplished time trialist as well. The powerhouse is not known as a climber, but as mentioned above, he did kind of break Bernal in the mountains in 2020, and he was down a few grams in 2021 after having his appendix removed.
What better way to make your Tour mountain debut than a Stage 11 that featured not 1, but 2 trips up the famed Mont Ventoux—or Mont Vendeux or VenTwo, if you will? Answer? There is no better way.
Van Aert made the break and then went solo on the second ascent of Ventoux to take the win. As it turns out, it was a win over a decade in the making.
"The first time I climbed the Ventoux I was 10. It was my first big one. I was very motivated to try something today. This region is really famous in Belgium, and it's a mythical Tour climb,” he said after the win.
Mountain win? Check.
Van Aert had a strong Individual Time Trial in Stage 5, but he still finished 4th behind dominant, do-everything GC-winner Pogacar. In Stage 20, Van Aert showed his power with a 21-second win in the 31km time trial.
Time trial win? Check.
The star of the 2021 sprint stages was a rejuvenated Mark Cavendish, who won 4 stages while chasing Merckx’s all-time Tour stage-win record. Van Aert came close in Stage 10, but finished second to Cav in the bunch sprint. Entering the final finish on the Champs de Elysees in Paris, Van Aert had yet to capture one of the sprint wins we have grown accustomed to seeing him win.
Van Aert finished his triple crown of stage wins—and probably made a grumpy Merckx happy by denying Cavendish a record 35th stage win—by winning the Stage 21 sprint in Paris. In doing so, he (again) showed the world the talent the cyclocross world has known about for literally a decade while also spawning the inevitable memes.
The intro to this post referenced how Van Aert and Van der Poel are inextricably linked in their quest for dominance of the road peloton, but it was hard to not note that Van Aert’s success came after MvdP withdrew from the Tour. Despite everything Van Aert has accomplished, Van der Poel has always done it better. During the Spring Classics Van der Poel won at Strade Bianche and survived to the last sprint at the Tour of Flanders, while Van Aert did not achieve his success until after Van der Poel concluded his Classics campaign. The same was true again at the Tour.
After his Stage 21 win, commentators proclaimed, “What can’t Wout do?” Any cyclocross fan will tell you, the answer is, “Beat Van der Poel in a race that matters.” Don’t get me wrong, what Wout has accomplished against the best in the world is incredible, but for him, the big, as yet unobtainable goal at this point in his career is besting Van der Poel at Cyclocross Worlds, the Tour of Flanders, or the Tour de France.
The Narrative Changes, Sort Of
When you have a narrative and a story but there are events that could potentially Change. Everything. you gotta get that stuff out into the world. Such is the reality this piece faces with respect to Van der Poel and his amazing month of July.
I started writing this on Saturday and just assumed Van der Poel would one-up Van Aert by winning gold in the mountain bike race after Van Aert’s road silver, thus fulfilling the prophecy of our friends at the Slow Ride Podcast. I mean, that’s just the way things work.
Van Aert certainly did his part to make it a July to remember for the vaunted duo by winning the chase-group sprint to take an Olympic silver on Friday. However, since he came up short to Richard Carapaz, it opened the door for Van der Poel to come away as the golden boy of the duel once again.
The cycling portion of the Olympics, however, has been a bit of a calamity for the Dutch Federation. First came Saturday’s Women’s Road Race, where the Dutch “Super Squad” somehow let an unknown Austrian in Anna Kiesenhofer escape for a solo win. Their tactics were such a shambles, silver-medalist Annemiek van Vleuten thought she had won when crossing the line.
The Women’s Road Team’s tactical mistakes presaged the issues Van der Poel would face in Sunday’s Mountain Bike race.
By this point, you have probably seen Van der Poel do a nosedive off the nearly two-Pidcock tall rock ledge in the first lap. But if you haven’t, here it is:
The story with the crash is there was a ramp down the drop during training, but it was removed for the race. The same was true during the Tokyo test event back in 2019, and according to other riders and the Dutch Federation, everyone knew the ramp would be removed.
After the race, Van der Poel posted on Instagram that he did not know the ramp would be removed for the race. Furthering the Dutch drama, teammate Milan Vader said the two of them talked about it at lunch and the Dutch coach was like, “Well duh, no ramp,”
In cyclocross, it’s been easy for Van der Poel to kind of do whatever he wants because he is just that much better than the rest of the competition. In road racing and mountain biking, he is finding there is a smaller margin for error, and so with him racing the Tour and then choosing to arrive in Tokyo later than some of the other athletes, it opened him up to criticism of his decisions. His coach put it a little coldly, but when you are at the top, your missteps are that much more significant.
The irony of the situation is that Van der Poel has become MVDP because he usually does not play it safe. He sends it when others stay on the ground. He rides it while others run it. But in this case, for whatever reason, Van der Poel made the decision to play it safe and it cost him a shot at his Olympic dream.
Whatever the lesson from Van der Poel’s mishap, the reality is that at least on the Olympic stage, Wout is going to come out on top. He has a silver in his suitcase and a shot at another medal in the Time Trial on Wednesday.
Van der Poel’s disastrous Olympics race puts a Belgium-in-winter damper on his great July, but he still accomplished something few do in wearing the yellow at the Tour de France. He has been cagey about his mountain bike slash try to win the Tour plans after Tokyo, but with the Dutch phenom entering his prime and likely only having two more shots at an Olympic gold, it would not be surprising for him to come back with a vengeance in 2024.