Four years on from his memorable first stage win of the Tour de France and Mathieu van der Poel is back at Mûr-de-Bretagne. This time, he arrives not chasing something, but defending it — the yellow jersey. It was the scene of one of the most memorable stages of the Tour this decade, in 2021, when he got away from the bunch not once but twice, defying all odds to claim bonus seconds, the stage and with it, the maillot jaune.
It was the Tour’s most unforgettable visit to the 2km mound in Brittany, and Van der Poel’s exploits immediately sprang to mind when its return was announced. But what are the Dutch superstar’s thoughts about his return to one of the key climbs of the first week of this Tour? “To be honest, I’m not thinking about tomorrow yet. I had to dig deep today. It will be difficult to have the legs to win tomorrow but we will see,” he said.
It’s unsurprising that Van der Poel is a little tired — he has been the most active rider of the race so far: on stage one he was leading his sprinter Jasper Philipsen to victory, then came his own stage win in Boulogne-sur-Mer. A spell in yellow then followed, with a valiant defence of the jersey on stage five’s time trial, before an exhausting excursion in the breakaway today. That’s a lot to pack into six days of racing. He would have been forgiven if decided to sit back in the peloton and try to recover on stage six, but that’s not how Van der Poel does things. His aggressive approach has landed him another day in one of the most prestigious jerseys in the sport.
Four years ago, he needed a miracle to snatch the maillot jaune from Julian Alaphilippe. He not only needed the stage win but also the bonus seconds available on the stage’s first passage over the climb. Remarkably, this year, despite being back in yellow, it will require an even greater miracle to keep it than four years ago proved to capture it. He sits one second ahead of a rampant Tadej Pogačar, and with bonus seconds available on the line, it seems as though Van der Poel’s second spell in yellow at this race may only last a day.
With an hour of racing left on stage six, it looked like he was going to have a much more significant buffer in yellow, but by the end he was clearly creaking — finally the full-throttled riding of the past week had caught up with him as he ground his way up the cruel final ramps to the line in Vire Normandie. The shrinking time gap to the peloton and Pogačar, was a surprise for Van der Poel himself. “I didn’t hear anything about the gap,” he said, “I was surprised it was only one second, as the last time gap I had, it was a bigger gap, but in the end it was really close. This was a hard day, and I was close to cramping. I have almost never had this. It was a hard day for everybody.”
If they only hold onto the jersey for one more day, it won’t matter much for Alpecin-Deceuninck. Despite the disaster of losing Philipsen in a shock crash on stage three, the Belgian squad have been the most successful team at this Tour and their run doesn’t look like it will end soon. What else can they go for?
Van der Poel’s stomping start to this Tour is reminiscent of his rival Wout van Aert’s run at the start of the 2022 Tour, a stage win and a spell in the yellow jersey in northern France. That year Van Aert went on to win the green jersey — a prize to which Van der Poel and his attributes are well suited. However, Van der Poel has played down any points classification ambitions: “The green jersey is not really a goal, but the team said I needed to be there as not many riders are sprinting for points. You never know what happens in week two and three, but the team will not go for it full gas. For example, in the sprints we will go for Kaden [Groves]. It is just to be there and be in contention.”
Van der Poel himself rarely gets involved in bunch sprints, and working for Groves in the all-important 50-point stage finishes means he could end up cannibalising his own chances, with Groves picking up points that could have gone to the former world champion.
Fans would like to see a battle between Van der Poel and the current leader Jonathan Milan and — whisper it — Tadej Pogačar, but points harvesting isn’t quite what Van der Poel is known for. He would undoubtedly be good at it; he could go in the breakaways and clean up the intermediate sprints and position himself in the top five on flat finishes.
But as he has always shown in his career, Van der Poel is a rider who loves nothing more than raising his arms in celebration. He and his team are a thoroughbred Classics squad, serial winners, like the Quick-Step of old. Plans may change, but for now, immediately after stage six, Van der Poel was clear about his ambitions for the rest of the Tour: “Everybody knows my speciality is the Classics. I just hope to recover well now, and hopefully I can try and win a stage in the coming weeks.”
