Every stage win at the Tour de France clearly matters, but there was no questioning just how much Mathieu van der Poel had put into this one. After rolling over the Champs-Elysées finish line, he clambered unsteadily from his bike and lay huddled against the barrier both completely physically and emotionally spent after the hardest-fought of victories on stage 21.
The Alpecin-Premier Tech rider had launched on the final run up the Rue Lepic in Montmartre, with only Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) able to keep pace on the climb. But with ten kilometres to go and the prestige of the last win in Paris at stage, the chase from the sprinters behind was furious and quickly closing.
The pair out front worked together, giving it everything they could to hold onto the slimmest of gaps turning onto the Champs-Elysées with under a kilometre left. Then with just hundreds of metres left even Pogačar ran out of momentum, but somehow Van der Poel found more, putting his head down, drawing on every last drop of physical and mental strength to keep going to the line as hard as he could.
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"We have a saying in Dutch that it has to come from your toes, but I don't know where this came from, but not from my toes," said Van der Poel in the post stage television interview. "I don't know where it came from."
It may have been a fourth career Tour de France stage win for the Dutch rider, but the drive to finish first in on this particular stage in Paris was clearly a goal that loomed large. Crossing the line with a throw of his bike, and less than the length of one to the closing sprint rivals, was an achievement he described to broadcaster NOS as "one of my most beautiful victories".
"I'm super happy, but if there was one race I still wanted to win in my career – I have a few, of course – but this was one of them," said Van der Poel in the official post-stage interview after claiming his second win at this edition of the race.
Teammate Jasper Philipsen – who won stage 17 last week with Van der Poel's lead out help and had already scooped up his victory in Paris in 2022 – also took second when he led the closing group of sprinters over the line, carefully measuring his sprint effort to hold off his rivals but not catch his ally. It was "a dream for the team", said Philipsen.
The satisfaction of capturing that victory for Van der Poel was intensified by the missed opportunity of 2025, when the introduction of the Montmartre loop all of a sudden delivered the perfect chance for the 2023 World Champion and multi-time winner of a long list of Classics – including Tour of Flanders, Paris Roubaix and Milan San Remo – to take the last prestigious stage of the Tour de France.
Van der Poel had started off strongly in the 2025 Tour de France to capture a win on stage 2, which also helped him spend four days in yellow, but his time at last year's race ended before he could make it to Paris. The Alpecin-Premier Tech rider instead had to head home ahead of stage 16 up Mont Ventoux, as what was initially thought to be a cold was ultimately diagnosed as pneumonia,. He then, instead of pursuing the win in Paris, was stuck on the side lines as long-time rival Wout van Aert (Visma-Lease a Bike) claimed it.
"A year I was thinking about this," said Van der Poel.
"I was sick last year and had to watch this stage on television. I was already thinking about this moment, and then the way it went, it's a dream."
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