{"id":71861,"date":"2025-08-15T15:06:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-15T15:06:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/71861\/"},"modified":"2025-08-15T15:06:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-15T15:06:07","slug":"mathieu-van-der-poel-unsure-of-form-in-first-race-back-after-tour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/71861\/","title":{"rendered":"Mathieu van der Poel unsure of form in first race back after Tour"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Mathieu van der Poel of Alpecin\u2013Deceuninck is ready to race \u2026 well, maybe. He is set to race the Renewi Tour soon, his first race back after leaving the Tour de France early. The five-day stage race takes place in Belgium \u2013 and the former road world champion won overall five years ago.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI have good memories of the Renewi Tour, especially my victory in 2020. Last year I was in a good position, until knee pain after a near-crash in the time trial unfortunately forced me to skip the final stage,\u201d he on the race\u2019s Instagram. \u201cThis summer I haven\u2019t raced since abandoning the Tour de France so it\u2019s a bit of a question how the form is. But the course suits me. Especially the stage finishing in Geraardsbergen on the third day is one I have marked in red.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/cyclingmagazine.ca\/sections\/news\/mathieu-van-der-poel-i-sometimes-wonder-how-the-others-recover-so-well\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Mathieu van der Poel: \u2018I sometimes wonder how the others recover so well\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>Van der Poel was having a great 2025 <a href=\"https:\/\/cyclingmagazine.ca\/sections\/news\/van-der-poel-didnt-win-but-proved-hes-a-true-champion\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Tour de France<\/a> before getting sick. He won a stage, wore the yellow jersey \u2013 and went in an epic 171-km break with his teammate Jonas Rickaert. The duo rode through the heat \u2013 with Rickaert eventually getting dropped with 10 km to go. Then it was just MVDP versus the peloton. The sweat-caked Dutchman was caught with a heart-breaking 700 m to go \u2013 but it was an incredible race.<\/p>\n<p>Rickaert, however, was rewarded for his brilliant ride as he tried to help launch his teammate to a victory. \u201cJonas had a dream to one day be on the Tour podium, for the combativity award. I was going to help him with that today,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Where does the name of the race come from? Great question. Renewi is a European waste management and recycling company \u2014 hence the name of the race.<\/p>\n<p>The first stage of the Renewi Tour is Terneuzen to Breskens for a total of 182.6 km<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mathieu van der Poel of Alpecin\u2013Deceuninck is ready to race \u2026 well, maybe. He is set to race&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":71862,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,635,13633,44707,82,636],"class_list":["post-71861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cycling","tag-mathieu-van-der-poel","tag-renewi-tour","tag-sports","tag-tour-de-france"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71861","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=71861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71861\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}