His track record was already strong, but it lacked an important line: a road world championship title. Mathieu Van der Poel repaired this small oversight by winning the 2023 Worlds road race between Edinburgh and Glasgow on Sunday. The Dutchman did it with style, alone, at the end of a race marked by the difficulty of a final circuit made slippery under the Scottish showers.
“The world championship was one of the most important goals of my career, he explained after the race, to the microphone of the organizers. Winning today is exceptional. With this title, I have almost won all the races I dreamed of when I was young. »
Van der Poel, who is the grandson of Raymond Poulidor, is the first Dutch world champion since Joop Zoetemelk in 1985. 16 kilometers from the finish, he thought he would lose everything by falling in a bend on a road soggy.
“I thought it was over,” he says. I didn’t have time to figure out what happened. I didn’t feel like I was taking any risks. And then I moved on. I wouldn’t say this fall was a good thing, but it added a bit of spice. »
After this misadventure, Van der Poel was able to remobilize to continue to extend, with a damaged shoe, a torn jersey and a bloody right elbow, his lead over a trio of pursuers made up of leaders from the peloton: the Belgian Wout van Aert, second as in 2020, at 1 minute 37 seconds, the Slovenian Tadej Pogacar, third, and the Dane Mads Pedersen, fourth.
He will aim for gold in mountain biking
At 28, Van der Poel, who was able to savor his triumph for a long time by holding his head in his hands, succeeds the former wearer of the rainbow jersey, the Belgian Remco Evenepoel, who failed to follow the best on Sunday.
Winner of Milan-San Remo and Paris-Roubaix this year, Van der Poel, already five times world cyclo-cross champion, confirms with this victory that he is one of the best one-day race riders of the moment. , if not the best. During the last Tour de France, his role was quite different within the Alpecin-Deceuninck team, where he was in charge of leading the sprints of Belgian Jasper Philipsen, who won four stages and finished with the green jersey on the shoulders, July 23, in Paris.
Fighter and acrobat at the same time, Van der Poel imposed his power and his science of driving, which worked wonders on a labyrinthine circuit of 14.3 kilometers with 48 turns to be covered ten times, forcing the vast majority of the peloton to abandonment.
Van der Poel’s victory comes a year after his retirement after 30 kilometers at the 2022 Worlds in Australia. He had then spent the night before the race in a police station following an altercation with two teenage girls in his hotel. He will also aim for world gold on Saturday, August 12, in mountain biking during these “Super Worlds” in Scotland.
After Julian Alaphilippe’s double in 2020 and 2021 and Christophe Laporte’s second place last year, France were once again counting on these two men to play for victory this year. But things quickly turned sour for the Blues, who were eight at the start.
Victim of a mechanical problem, Christophe Laporte was forced to let the favorites go without ever managing to return, more than 100 kilometers from the finish. Julian Alaphilippe tried to wait for him to help him, but did not have the physical form to bring his leader back to the forefront. First Frenchman, Valentin Madouas ranks 15th, 7 minutes 53 seconds behind the winner. Benoît Cosnefroy finished 47th, 14 minutes 13 seconds behind Van der Poel.