{"id":760553,"date":"2026-06-26T01:40:17","date_gmt":"2026-06-26T01:40:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/760553\/"},"modified":"2026-06-26T01:40:17","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T01:40:17","slug":"a-rubbish-race-for-mathieu-van-der-poel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/760553\/","title":{"rendered":"A rubbish race for Mathieu van der Poel"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alpecin – Premier Tech’s van der Poel is preparing to take on the Tour de France<\/a> on July 4th after a mixed-bag classics season. With no monument victories, but some impressive results in Tirreno Adriatico, Omloop and E3 Saxo Classic, the former world champion will be hoping to re-light his fire at the Grand Boucle.And fans in the Netherlands hoping to catch a glimpse of him this weekend will be disappointed as he opted not to ride the championships. With a largely flat course favouring fast men over a classics specialist<\/a> like van der Poel, Dutch legend Tom Dumoulin understands the decision.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

National Championships usually offer an intriguing element to racing, with big-name riders often without their usual team support, the chances of the best on-paper rider winning the race are lower than at a usual race with their trade teams.<\/p>\n

Dumoulin questions if it’s possible for best rider to win”Visma | Lease a Bike is also at the start with I don’t know how many riders,’ Dumoulin said on NOS Wielerpodcast<\/a>, noting that Visma’s show of strength of the race would also hinder his chances.<\/p>\n

“Mathieu usually can’t compete against that either. It then becomes a bit of a gamble whether you can win as the best rider in the race.”<\/p>\n

Dumoulin pointed out that the parcours makes it difficult for him to get a separation for victory: “The course is difficult, but not so difficult that you drop everyone on a single climb.”<\/p>\n

“Rubbish” race for van der Poel<\/p>\n

Despite twice winning the Dutch National Championships road race, Dumoulin sees it as a “rubbish” prospect for him – pointing out that the prospect doesn’t entice riders based in other countries or with big Tour de France objectives to compete.<\/p>\n

“Let’s be honest: the National Championship is, of course, a rubbish race for Mathieu van der Poel.”<\/p>\n

He added: I feel really sorry for the National Championships, because I always thought it was a fantastic race, and so did many pros, but Mathieu has become such a great rider that he wouldn’t come all the way from Spain or Belgium specifically for the National Championships, right before the Tour de France. I can understand that in his case.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alpecin – Premier Tech’s van der Poel is preparing to take on the Tour de France on July…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":760554,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,77973,3479,85,177801,2845],"class_list":["post-760553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cycling","tag-mathieu-van-der-poel","tag-national-championships","tag-sports","tag-tom-dumoulin","tag-tour-de-france"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=760553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760553\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/760554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=760553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=760553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=760553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}