{"id":468121,"date":"2026-03-10T17:23:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T17:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/468121\/"},"modified":"2026-03-10T17:23:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T17:23:08","slug":"i-would-love-to-go-back-to-strade-bianche-mathieu-van-der-poel-reveals-regrets-about-missing-italian-classic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/468121\/","title":{"rendered":"‘I would love to go back to Strade Bianche’ – Mathieu van der Poel reveals regrets about missing Italian Classic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Premier Tech)<\/a> has admitted to Cyclingnews that he felt a few regrets about not riding this year’s Strade Bianche<\/a> but said he would love to go back to the Tuscany gravel race, perhaps when he no longer races cyclo-cross in the winter.<\/p>\n

The Alpecin-Premier Tech rider travelled to Italy on Saturday but to race this week’s Tirreno-Adriatico<\/a> as the final build-up to Milan-San Remo<\/a> and the cobbled Classics.<\/p>\n

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Strade Bianche in early March comes too early and is perhaps too demanding for Van der Poel, as he tries to balance a winter cyclo-cross campaign, pre-season training and a Classics peak for the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix.<\/p>\n

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Van der Poel saw the highlights of Strade Bianche and how friend and rival Tadej Poga\u010dar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) again dominated the race, sparking pangs of regret.<\/p>\n

“Yeah, I regret not riding a little bit. It’s a race I would love to participate in, ” he said before the start of stage 2 of Tirreno-Adriatico, which ends with a sector of gravel and a climb up to the San Gimignano finish, which will likely suit the Dutchman.<\/p>\n

“But the plan we make [for the season] is already a good one, I think, with the cyclo-cross and the rest of the races. Maybe one day I will do it again with a different winter program.”<\/p>\n

The current Strade Bianche route includes 4000 metres of altitude gain, with the two loops of the Colle Pinzuto-Le Tolfe climbs making for a spectacular but hard race.<\/p>\n

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Van der Poel won Strade Bianche in 2021 <\/a>when the course covered just one final lap. However, he sportingly accepted that he has to adapt to the race, not the other way around.<\/p>\n

“My decisions are not based on the race route. The course is how it is, and they should not adapt it to how I wanted,” he said.<\/p>\n

“It’s a really hard race, and so it will always be difficult to win. If you only start the races you can win, I would not race so much, but I would love to go back to Strade Bianche.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Premier Tech) has admitted to Cyclingnews that he felt a few regrets about not…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":468122,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-468121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-cycling","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=468121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468121\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/468122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=468121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=468121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=468121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}