Mathieu van der Poel looks relaxed and sun-tanned as he takes his seat in the bar at the Syncrosfera hotel and performance centre in Spain, where he has been staying to log some dry November kilometres.
The difficult periods and accumulated mental fatigue that occurred in the second half of his 2022 race season are behind him and he is looking ahead to his cyclo-cross campaign and ahead into the new year.
You could sum up Van der Poel‘s season as one of two halves. Despite delaying his start due to a back problem, victories and podiums arrived straight away in the spring. Yet, the second half of the season wasn’t quite as smooth, with an early exit from the Tour de France and a controversy-mired World Championships.
Rewind several months and Van der Poel hit the ground running with a podium place at Milan San Remo, which was followed up with victory at Dwars door Vlaanderen as well as a second win at the Tour of Flanders. The following month brought a stage victory at his debut Giro d’Italia and a three-day stint in the maglia rosa.
It was surely a magnificent run of race results for any rider, but Van der Poel could only be moderately pleased with his year.
“I think it was a strange season but it was not that bad,” Van der Poel tells Cyclingnews.
“It should be a bit better but I’m still quite satisfied, satisfied with some nice victories.”
Van der Poel must have wanted more from the second part of his season. The Tour and Worlds disappointments have no doubt added to the motivation to achieve his sizeable goals in 2023, starting with some cyclocross races and the World Championships in Hoogerheide in early Februrary.
“I’ve trained pretty hard to be at a decent level in cyclocross,” he said. “My best period has to come with the Worlds – that’s my main focus this season.”
Van der Poel is one of the few riders from his or any cycling era to combine and compete at the very top in multiple disciplines. He maintains that riding the road, cyclocross and mountain bike contributes to his mental freshness and he hopes to include more mountain bike racing this year.
“I miss mountain biking a lot during summer, I also think I’ve had one of my best road seasons while doing mountain biking as well,” he said.
“I hope to do some mountain bike races this year and certainly the year after to prepare for the Olympics in Paris.”
There’s even a mention of a love of the downhill…
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