After underwhelming worlds, what does Mathieu van der Poel do next?

Mathieu van der Poel’s much-hyped return to mountain bike world championships was off to a good start, until it wasn’t. The Dutch phenom flew off the start, moving up through the field in what he called a “dream scenario.”

As the laps wore on, the multi-discipline world champion started to fade. By lap three, the race was clearly not going his way. When the finish line finally arrived, the best van der Poel could manage was 29th.

Wrong day for a bad day

While Sunday went better than van der Poel’s inauspicious XCO worlds in 2023, where he crashed on the start loop just days after defeating Wout van Aert to win road worlds, it still wasn’t what the Dutch star had planned.

“I just had a bad day. I didn’t feel like I’d blown myself out, but it wasn’t a good day,” Van der Poel tols NOS after the race. “There are no excuses. Everything went pretty well at the start, but I haven’t been feeling great for a while. I can feel in training that I’m less resilient.”

MvdP is usually quite focused on winning. When that looked unlikely, extremely unlikely, the star rider shifted focus.

“It was a long race mentally, but mountain biking is the only discipline where it’s still fun to ride,” van der Poel shared. “So my legs were really bad, but I tried to enjoy it a little.”

That’s a good sign for fans of MvdP mountain biking, but not for anyone hoping to catch him in action again this year.

End of season comes early…

Van der Poel’s less-than-stellar performance in Switzerland immediately called into question his plans for the rest of the season. For the rider, though, it appears the answer to those questions was already quite clear.

“What will I do this season? Nothing, just rest. I had already decided that before the World Championships,” van der Poel admitted. “Like I said: I haven’t been feeling as resilient in training for a few weeks. I had already decided after the Renewi Tour that this would be my last race.”

That mean’s planned appearances at European road world championships and at gravel world championships. The multi-time cyclocorss world champion did, though, leave the door open to return to racing in December. That’s when the heart of cyclocross season kicks off in Belgium and the Netherlands. Here’s hoping we’ll still see van der Poel riding off road on skinny tires in 2025.

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