Adrie van der Poel shares a string of Mathieu anecdotes: “I still see him at the buffet on the day he won Amstel Gold Race”

Adrie was asked when he first noticed Mathieu had something special. “When he was 4 or 5, on his first little bike. Jean Nelissen came in the morning and followed me. He asked Mathieu what he wanted to be and he said: cyclist. He has always had a drive, and then it didn’t matter what it was about.”

As a kid, Van der Poel already loved heading out on his bike. “There was a small bit of woodland nearby, and they had roped in a few cyclists. Every morning he would go off with a wheelbarrow, spades and ropes,” his father recalled.

“After a while we went to look and saw they’d built a whole platform for the start and all these banked corners. They’d been working for two weeks to make it. They went and raced there, and after two and a half weeks the forest ranger came by: dad could go and tear everything down,” Adrie said with a laugh.

Then there is another story — the time Mathieu broke his collarbone in training, one that has been told before. “He’d crashed and his shoulder hurt. I said: get in the car, I’ll do the training for another 15 minutes. At some point he started honking and David said: I think he’s cured. But he wasn’t cured — he was in pain.”

Eventually, Van der Poel ended up working with the Roodhooft brothers. “I told one man I had a little talent: Patrick Lefevere. And he still regrets it,” Adrie said. “Christoph bit straight away. When we came to him, he immediately sorted bikes. Mathieu and David also said, when interest came: ‘We’ve had equipment from Christoph for years, so it wouldn’t be right to go to another team now, would it? We’re staying with Christoph.”

In those years, a lot has changed, Adrie noted. “I still see Mathieu on the morning of the Amstel Gold Race he won. It was just the buffet — bacon, eggs, you name it. He stuffs himself, and eight hours later he wins. Last year he said: I have to work even harder if I want to follow Tadej. Those training rides demand so much as well — they ride seven hours at an average of 38 kilometres per hour. For us, that was the Étoile de Bessèges.”

The bond with the Roodhooft brothers has always remained strong, but Adrie believes there are other people who have been vital in his son’s development. “I think he takes the most from Christoph and Philip. They have made each other what they are. But he also has a connection with Tom Verhagen, his coach: they dare to correct each other.”

At home, Van der Poel has found calm, Adrie said on Sporza. “Roxanne accepts Mathieu for who he is. She doesn’t have grey hair yet, but sometimes he is someone who could give you grey hair. She takes a lot off his plate,” his father said. “And his hobby now is golf, and he completely throws himself into it. The day after a Classic, he’ll be out playing golf. He has found a certain peace.”