Mathieu van der Poel won't ride Olympic MTB event, puts full focus on road race and Tour de France
Dutchman makes 'logical choice', will target stages and help Jasper Philipsen at the Tour de France
Mathieu van der Poel’s summer race schedule has been announced by Alpecin-Deceuninck, with a stage win and supporting sprinter Jasper Philipsen at the Tour de France and Paris Olympics road race set as his two key targets.
The road World Champion won’t participate in the Olympic cross-country mountain bike event as he had originally planned, with it placing too much time pressure on his other goals.
“After careful consideration, the decision has been made. No mountain biking, but full focus on the combination Tour de France - Olympic road race,” read an Instagram post from Alpecin-Deceuninck.
The Olympic MTB men’s event takes place on Monday, July 29, just eight days after the final stage of the Tour de France in Nice and only five days before the road race in Paris.
“This is the most logical choice to be able to prepare for my goals without time pressure,” Van der Poel said. “The combination with MTB was too difficult. But who knows, maybe in LA ‘28 I can focus on mountain biking.”
At the Tour de France, Van der Poel will once again be on sprint lead-out duty for Jasper Philipsen, the most successful sprinter from the 2023 Tour with four wins, with the World Champion being key to two of those wins.
“My ambition for the Tour de France? I hope, like last year, to assist teammate Jasper Philipsen in his hunt for stage wins and a possible green jersey,” said Van der Poel.
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The Dutchman also used the Tour as preparation for the 2023 World Championships in Glasgow where he took a memorable win in Scotland despite crashing on wet roads. The similar time gap between the Tour and Olympic road race in 2024 will give Van der Poel great confidence.
But it won’t just be about preparation for Paris while he’s in France as Van der Poel, a former Tour de France stage winner and yellow jersey wearer, is eager to get back in the wins.
“The goal is to also win a stage myself this year,” said Van der Poel, whose one Tour win came in emotional fashion on stage 2 of the 2021 edition when he powered twice up the Mûr-de-Bretagne and took the maillot jaune.
Van der Poel has kicked on from his best road season in 2023 and looked more dominant than ever this year, with long solo wins at the E3 Saxo Classic, Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix.
Philipsen was second to Van der Poel at Roubaix for the second successive season and also contributed to Alpecin-Deceuninck’s near-perfect Monument record in 2024 with the win at Milan-San Remo.
He was heavily aided by Van der Poel on that day to chase down Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) and all of the late attackers on the Via Roma. They’ll be hoping for more success when the Tour kicks off on June 29 in Florence.
The Belgian fast man was also announced for the Baloise Belgium Tour between June 12-16 and the Belgian national championships on June 23.
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James Moultrie is a gold-standard NCTJ journalist who joined Cyclingnews as a News Writer in 2023 after originally contributing as a freelancer for eight months, during which time he also wrote for Eurosport, Rouleur and Cycling Weekly. Prior to joining the team he reported on races such as Paris-Roubaix and the Giro d’Italia Donne for Eurosport and has interviewed some of the sport’s top riders in Chloé Dygert, Lizzie Deignan and Wout van Aert. Outside of cycling, he spends the majority of his time watching other sports – rugby, football, cricket, and American Football to name a few.