After a hugely successful Spring Classics campaign and the cancellation of the Valkenburg mountain bike World Cup race, Mathieu van der Poel has opted for an extended break from competition before preparing for the Tour de France.
Van der Poel won Milan-San Remo and Paris-Roubaix and was also second in the E3 Saxo Classic and the Tour of Flanders before taking a well-deserved break. He has recently been seen playing golf and collecting a new SUV.
Van der Poel has opted against switching to fat tyre racing solely for the Nové Město race on May 12. Instead, he will focus on recovery and road training before heading to altitude in La Plagne on May 21. He will ride the Tour de Suisse in June to prepare for the Tour de France with the Dutch national championships also an option.
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Van der Poel still plans to target a mountain biking gold medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics but needs to secure qualification for the Netherlands. After he raced the cross-country event in Tokyo in 2022 but crashed out after failing to understand a descending wooden plank had been removed for the race, he vowed to come back.
Van der Poel's only mountain bike events of 2023 are expected to be after the World Championships road race in Glasgow on August 6.
The Netherlands have until the end of May 2024 to secure qualification but are hoping other riders such as Milan Vader can also help score points. There are only 36 athlete spots each for the men's and women's cross-country races, with the top eight countries earning two places.
The Netherlands are currently ranked 31st and will need both Vader and Van der Poel to bolster the country's points total, so he may have to prioritise mountain biking ahead of road racing in the final months of 2023.
In 2019, Van der Poel's and Vader's points were crucial to the Netherlands' fifth-place ranking, qualifying both riders for Tokyo. Vader went on to finish 10th behind gold medalist Tom Pidcock.
Neither rider has so far featured in the 12-month rolling rankings as the 2023 MTB season begins to get underway in Nove Mesto on May 14, where Tom Pidcock will start his Olympic defence campaign.
The Dutch standings will likely change soon. Vader, who races for Jumbo-Visma, is set to ride three World Cup events in May and June. There are four rounds before Worlds: Nove Mesto, Lenzerheide on June 11, Leogang on June 18 and Val di Sole on July 2nd.
Alpecin-Deceuninck told Cyclingnews that his calendar Van der Poel's calendar is still to be confirmed but he could switch to a mountain bike-focused calendar in September and October, which would give the Netherlands more opportunities to gain points.
There are four XCO World Cup races after the UCI MTB World Championships in Andorra, Les Portes du Soleil, Snowshoe and Mont-Sainte Anne on October 8, which, coincidentally, comes one week before the first Cyclocross World Cup round in Waterloo, Wisconsin.
