{"id":460859,"date":"2026-02-08T02:10:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-08T02:10:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/460859\/"},"modified":"2026-02-08T02:10:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-08T02:10:10","slug":"roger-de-vlaeminck-doesnt-think-mathieu-van-der-poel-is-all-that-great-either","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/460859\/","title":{"rendered":"Roger de Vlaeminck doesn’t think Mathieu van der Poel is all that great, either"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mathieu van der Poel may have just won his eighth cyclocross world championship, but that\u2019s nothing particularly special. At least not according to Roger de Vlaeminck.<\/p>\n

The greatest \u2018crosser of all time? \u201cNot by a long shot,\u201d de Vlaeminck told Het Nieuwsblad<\/a>, that despite MvdP\u2019s record putting him one ahead of de Vlaeminck\u2019s brother Eric\u2019s record.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut can he win a Grand Tour?\u201d Roger de Vlaeminck.<\/p>\n

Of course, even if van der Poel had won a Grand Tour, or several, that wouldn\u2019t impress de Vlaeminck either. The long-retired racer took time last fall to slam Tadej Poga\u010dar\u2019s achievements<\/a>. Apparently winning world championships and the Tour de France in the same season didn\u2019t warrant the media attention de Vlaeminck saw Poga\u010dar getting.<\/p>\n

Former Italian pro slams De Vlaeminck\u2019s \u2018absurd\u2019 attack on Poga\u010dar<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

If neither van der Poel nor Poga\u010dar is worthy of the praise they\u2019re getting, who is?<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t worry, de Vlaeminck has a list.<\/p>\n

\u201cRenato Longo, Rolf Wolfshohl, Albert Van Damme, Peter Frischknecht, Eric, me. They\u2019re different men than we are now.\u201d<\/p>\n

And besides, why wasn\u2019t anyone talking about the races he won?!<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve won 512 races. 512, you know. Should I list them all?\u201d de Vlaeminck said, as part of his concluding argument against van der Poel.<\/p>\n

Seems like anyone who wins a world championship finds themselves in de Vlaeminck\u2019s crosshairs. But Lord help us, if this man says anything about Mags we will fly to Belgium and correct him in person.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mathieu van der Poel may have just won his eighth cyclocross world championship, but that\u2019s nothing particularly special.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":460860,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,635,13633,126514,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-460859","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-cycling","11":"tag-mathieu-van-der-poel","12":"tag-roger-de-vlaeminck","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460859","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=460859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460859\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/460860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=460859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=460859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=460859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}