It's not often that Mathieu van der Poel leaves you with your jaw on the floor these days, such is the scale of his achievements in this sport, but the Dutchman produced one of most audacious and mind-boggling exploits on the final stage of the Tour de Luxembourg .
Davide Piganzoli (Visma-Lease a Bike) sewed up the general classification victory but his limelight was well and truly stolen by Van der Poel.
The stage measured 177 kilometres and the Alpecin-Premier Tech rider completed 174 of them on his own at the head of the race, producing one of the longest solo victories cycling has ever seen.
Van der Poel is treating this five-stage race as preparation for next week's road race at the World Championships, and he was in a world of his own out there on Sunday, attacking just three kilometres in and not seeing another rider until beyond the finish line more than four hours later.
On a hilly route that added up to more than 3,000 metres of elevation gain, Van der Poel opened a lead of more than five minutes, and remarkably held onto it as the stage wore on, eventually crossing the line just over a minute clear of the rest.
More to follow
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Patrick is an NCTJ-accredited journalist with a bachelor’s degree in modern languages (French and Spanish) and a decade’s experience in digital sports media, largely within the world of cycling. He re-joined Cyclingnews as Deputy Editor in February 2026, having previously spent eight years on staff between 2015 and 2023. In between, he was Deputy Editor at GCN and spent 18 months working across the sports portfolio at Future before returning to the cycling press pack. Patrick works across Cyclingnews’ wide-ranging output, assisting the Editor in global content strategy, with a particular focus on shaping CN's news operation.
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