{"id":366982,"date":"2025-12-25T00:20:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-25T00:20:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/366982\/"},"modified":"2025-12-25T00:20:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-25T00:20:10","slug":"adrie-van-der-poel-opens-up-on-mathieus-retirement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/366982\/","title":{"rendered":"Adrie van der Poel opens up on Mathieu\u2019s \u2018retirement\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

The cyclocross world has been buzzing since Mathieu van der Poel floated the idea that his days in the mud may be numbered. After recent races in Antwerp and Koksijde, the Dutch star spoke candidly about wanting to step away at a high point<\/a>. Those comments quickly fuelled speculation he could walk away after the upcoming world championships in Hulst, The Netherlands. There, he hopes to break the all-time record of seven elite wins, which he currently shares with Eric De Vlaeminck.<\/p>\n

Before the start of the Hofstade race, father Adrie van der Poel offered a somewhat calmer reading of the situation.
\u201cHe may well have said those things, but that\u2019s something you reassess next year,\u201d Papa vdP said to In de Leiderstrui<\/a>. \u201cHe hasn\u2019t said he\u2019s done with cyclocross. He\u2019s simply left an opening.\u201d<\/p>\n

Has Mathieu van der Poel done it all?<\/p>\n

Mathieu explained after Antwerp that there is \u201cnot much left to win\u201d in the discipline, adding the next day that stopping remains \u201can option,\u201d though nothing has been decided. Age, he acknowledged, plays a role in the thinking.<\/p>\n

Watch as Mathieu van der Poel\u2019s mom nervously follows her son\u2019s race for the rainbow jersey<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

His father believes context matters. A longer road season \u2014 possibly stretching to Il Lombardia \u2014 would complicate a full winter of racing. \u201cThat wasn\u2019t an issue this year,\u201d he said, \u201cbut if you have to rebuild after that, a \u2018cross winter becomes much harder.\u201d<\/p>\n

The toll of the \u2018cross season<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also the grind. As a former pro (and world champ, no less) he knows how exhausting the \u2018cross season can be. \u201cThose are not half days,\u201d he said. \u201cYou warm up early, race, shower, deal with doping control. If he wins, you\u2019re often still there an hour and a half later. You\u2019re home at seven or eight, then it\u2019s straight to the massage table. You can\u2019t just do that three days in a row without paying for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

MvdP\u2019s dad: The CX race is \u2018easy\u2019, it\u2019s the lead-up that\u2019s hard<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Mathieu has also mentioned the appeal of spending a quieter winter in Spain. Adrie van der Poel doesn\u2019t know whether skipping cyclocross would make his son better on the road, but says the thought is there. \u201cHe\u2019s said it himself \u2014 Tadej Poga\u010dar doesn\u2019t race \u2018cross and still rides a great spring. And the pressure is always there. The more you win, the closer the first loss feels.\u201d<\/p>\n

Looking further ahead, the 2028 worlds in Hoogerheide, The Netherlands loom large. MvdP has said Hulst could be the moment to stop if he wins there, rather than risk a lesser result later.<\/p>\n

As for vdP senior, who is involved in organizing Hoogerheide, the stance is simple. \u201cOf course we\u2019d love him to race,\u201d he said. \u201cBut if he doesn\u2019t, that\u2019s his choice. I respect that completely.\u201d<\/p>\n

Next up for Mathieu van der Poel and the rest of the field is the UCI World Cup in Gavere. Four Canadian elite men will also be there, along with five elite women.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The cyclocross world has been buzzing since Mathieu van der Poel floated the idea that his days in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":366983,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[157203,49,48,635,13633,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-366982","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-2025-2026-uci-cx-world-cuip","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-cycling","12":"tag-mathieu-van-der-poel","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=366982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366982\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/366983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}