Mathieu van der Poel had a few days’ rest and relaxation in the Veneto pencilled into his schedule between the inaugural UCI Gravel World Championships and Friday’s Serenissima Gravel, but rather than avail of a rare spot of downtime, the Dutchman figured that he might as well race.
On Wednesday morning, Van der Poel could have opted for a lie-in and then a gentle ride to go and soak up the Autumn sunshine on the terrace of some café in Bassano del Grappa. Instead, he chose to race the Giro del Veneto after volunteering himself for a spot in Alpecin-Deceuninck’s line-up. Leisure, it seems, is anathema to the worldview of a man seemingly hardwired to compete.
“I was here for the week anyway,” Van der Poel said before the Giro del Veneto when he emerged from his team bus on Padova’s striking Prato della Valle. “It’s difficult to stay training so I preferred to do a race to keep busy, otherwise I’m staying in the hotel all day, so I just said I’d do the race.”
Van der Poel’s presence instantly made him the favourite for the Giro del Veneto. Indeed, his status is such that last year’s winner, his teammate Xandro Meurisse, even surrendered the number one bib number to him, like a player yielding the number seven squad number to Cristiano Ronaldo.
After his ill-fated expedition to the World Championships in Australia, which ended with a charge of common assault following an altercation with two teenage girls in his hotel on the eve of the race, Van der Poel was perhaps keener than usual to end his road campaign with a win. He wasn’t aboard the key move containing teammate Jay Vine that went clear just ahead of the local laps around Vicenza, however, and he opted to pull out of the race shortly before the finish.
At Serenissima Gravel on Friday, Van der Poel brings the curtain down on a campaign that he confessed had been more taxing than normal. A nagging back injury delayed the start of his road season until mid-March, and he looked to make up for lost time by combining the Classics, Giro d’Italia and Tour de France.
Victory at the Tour of Flanders and the opening day of the Giro were the high points of that sequence, but by July, when he abandoned the Tour, Van der Poel’s fatigue was evident, even if he rallied with a hat-trick of wins in the build-up to that doomed trip to Australia.
“I think this year the mental fatigue is a bit bigger than the physical one. There’s not really a lot left,” Van der Poel said on Wednesday…
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