{"id":581155,"date":"2026-04-04T06:15:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T06:15:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/581155\/"},"modified":"2026-04-04T06:15:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T06:15:09","slug":"scared-straight-david-van-der-poel-says-night-in-jail-the-best-thing-that-could-have-happened-to-his-brother","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/581155\/","title":{"rendered":"Scared Straight? David van der Poel says night in jail the ‘best thing that could have happened’ to his brother"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you want to win world championships, all it takes is one night in jail. Well, and a prodigous talent. While Mathieu van der Poel\u2019s always had the latter, his brother David recently identified the former, specifically Mathieu van der Poel\u2019s brief incarceration in Australia on the eve of 2022 world championships<\/a>, as the career turning point.<\/p>\n

Speaking with AD<\/a>, David van der Poel says that night in jail (for which he was later exonerated<\/a>, by the way) caused a shift in his brother. It turned him from a prolific talent that could win at will to a prolific talent relentlessly focused on achieving his career goals.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe had been winning throughout his entire career,\u201d David said. \u201cBack then he would win races even when riding tactically foolishly. He was just so much better than the rest.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then came road world championships in 2022. An incident in the Dutch rider\u2019s hotel led to him being briefly imprisoned. On the evening before road world championships. Mathieu van der Poel would drop out of the race the next day.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have never seen Mathieu so sad and insecure. He was in a very bad place,\u201d David, who also raced professionally for over a decade, recalled of that period.<\/p>\n

After watching 2022 worlds slip away, David said he saw a shift in how his brother approached his career.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s when the realization hit,\u201d David argues. \u201cThat event in Australia created disbeleive and a sense of injustice. But it also changed something.\u201d<\/p>\n

Apparently, faced with the possibility that he could actually lose a race he wanted to win was a jarring realization.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat cell in Australia was the best thing that could have happened to him, in hindsight,\u201d David argues. \u201cHe started training even harder and didn\u2019t let any more opportunities slip away.\u201d<\/p>\n

The next year, Mathieu van der Poel won elite men\u2019s road worlds in Glasgow<\/a>. It was a stunning victory after a race filled with chalanges and misfortune for the Dutch rider.<\/p>\n

Later that week, van der Poel would watch cross country mountain bike world championships slip through his fingers<\/a> after an odd crash on the opening start loop. Maybe there are still more lessons to learn for the Dutch phenom. Hopefully his quest to win XCO worlds doesn\u2019t involve another run-in with the law.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you want to win world championships, all it takes is one night in jail. Well, and a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":460860,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,635,217031,80140,13633,82,30127],"class_list":{"0":"post-581155","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-david-van-der-poel","12":"tag-jail","13":"tag-mathieu-van-der-poel","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-world-championships"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581155","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=581155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581155\/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=581155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=581155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=581155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}