Gold for eccentric cycling star
Van der Poel destroys competition at Cross World Championships
February 4, 2024, 6:16 p.m
Road cycling world champion Mathieu van der Poel is also a force off the road. The Dutchman won his sixth title at the World Cross Country Championships. He clearly outclasses the competition. The next big goal is the Olympic Games.
Cycling star Mathieu van der Poel raced to his sixth title at the World Cross Country Championships as if unleashed. The Dutch all-rounder celebrated a confident start-to-finish victory in the title fights in Tabor, Czech Republic. Van der Poel won after six laps, 37 seconds ahead of his compatriot Joris Nieuwenhuis. Third place went to the Belgian Michael Vanthourenhout. The German players had no chance, the German champion Marcel Meisen ended up in 32nd place.
Van der Poel, who also won the road race title at the World Championships in Glasgow last year, is only one success away from the record set by Belgian Erik De Vlaeminck in cross country. He triumphed seven times between 1966 and 1973. Van der Poel had already won his first world title in Tabor nine years ago.
On the muddy course, van der Poel, who won 13 victories in 14 cross-country starts this season, was unrivaled. Even three-time world champion Zdenek Stybar from the Czech Republic couldn’t do anything in the last race of his career. Van der Poel’s biggest rivals Wout van Aert (Belgium) and Thomas Pidcock (Great Britain) decided not to take part.
Things run smoothly without distraction – sometimes even along with it
It is quite possible that the 29-year-old will continue his title hunt on the mountain bike at the Olympic Games in Paris. This was not yet possible at the 2021 Olympics in Tokyo and the 2023 World Cup, when the grandson of the tour star Raymond Poulidor, who died in 2019, had to give up after a fall.
Van der Poel shouldn’t allow himself to be disturbed in any other way. At the 2022 Road World Championships in Australia, the spirited cycling star spent the night before the cycling showdown in the police station after a dispute with two girls in the hotel hallway and then later gave up in frustration during the race.
At the end of last year, at the cross-country race in Hulst, he was carried away by a spitting attack in the direction of the spectators after they had insulted him the entire time. “I’ve had enough of these boos,” said the 29-year-old, who had to pay a fine of 200 Swiss francs. He still took the victory.