At Milan-San Remo, Mathieu van der Poel launched one of his trademark big attacks on the Poggio to put clear air between him and a chasing group of Filippo Ganna, Wout van Aert and Tadej Pogacar. They never brought him back and he won by 15 seconds on the Via Roma. He was riding a new, as yet unreleased Canyon Aeroad.
It’s a continuation of a string of one-day race victories and grand tour stage wins in previous years by the Alpecin-Deceuninck team’s Dutch star, proving that he’s back in peak form after 2022 was marred by recurrent back problems from his crash at the Tokyo Olympics in the MTB XC event.
Those injuries followed him into the 2022/23 cyclocross season, but weren’t enough to stop van der Poel from claiming a fifth cyclocross world championship in February, beating that man van Aert in a sprint. Canyon had another unlaunched bike, a new Canyon Inflite, for him during the cyclocross season.
This year, van der Poel will be concentrating his road campaign on the Classics, the Tour de Suisse and the Tour de France, with the aim of arriving in Paris after abandoning in both 2021 and 2022.
As a rider who competes in road racing, cyclocross, gravel and mtb, we have taken a look at some of the interesting machines Van der Poel has raced on over the last few years.
What is Mathieu van der Poel’s bike for 2023?
Van der Poel’s Milan-San Remo winning bike was a new model Canyon Aeroad, which the brand has yet to launch officially. Changes from the current generation Canyon Aeroad CFR, which is already a formidable speed machine, appear slight, with similar frame tube profiles.
But the giveaway is the newly-positioned seatpost clamp, which has been moved from the rear of the seat tube to the top of the top tube, where it was placed in the last-but-one Aeroad model.
It’s not the first time that van der Poel has been spotted on what appeared to be a prototype Aeroad. We discussed the seatpost issues with the 2020 bike (not to mention a Stop Ride notice from Canyon in 2021 when van der Poel broke the bike’s handlebars) when the latest-model Aeroad first appeared in Instagram and Strava posts.
What size is Mathieu van der Poel’s bike
Van der Poel is 1.84m tall and weighs 75kg. He rides a size Large (56cm) Aeroad which has a reach of 490mm and a stack of 662mm.
Van der Poel like most professionals rides a pretty aggressive setup with only a single spacer under his handlebar stem and his gear shifters quite low down on the integrated handlebars which also lend…
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