Mathieu van der Poel unveils his (MTB) schedule following the Tour de France

Mathieu van der Poel’s autumn will be entirely focused on two world championships. After the Tour de France, the Dutch rider from Alpecin-Premier Tech will first shift his focus to mountain biking, after which MVDP is set to compete in the Road World Championships. The rider himself confirmed this before the start of the final stage of the Tour.

"My full focus will then be on mountain biking," Van der Poel told NOS about the period after the Tour. "I’ll still have about a month to prepare for the World Championships. Normally, I’ll compete in one more World Cup race, just like last year in Les Gets. And then the World Championships." This year’s Mountain Bike World Championships will take place in Val di Sole, Italy, on August 30.

Before the Tour de France, Van der Poel had actually planned to log some training and race kilometers on a mountain bike, but those plans were changed. “I would have liked to have raced in two mountain bike races,” Van der Poel told this website and others earlier. “That didn’t happen. I had some back pain, but it went away very quickly, so everything turned out fine.” The foray into MTB was intended to help him build up some rhythm ahead of the World Championships.

So the mountain bike races that had been scheduled before the Tour de France were canceled. “But that meant it turned into a bit of a double preparation again. That’s why we decided to focus entirely on preparing for the Tour de France.” And after the twenty-one stages in and around France, Van der Poel will hop on his MTB, with Les Gets—a week before the MTB World Championships—as his first MTB race.

After the Mountain Bike World Championships, Van der Poel will head to the Road World Championships. “That’s also on the schedule. Normally, I’ll be there too,” said the former road world champion. The battle for the rainbow jersey will take place in Montréal, Canada, on September 27.

It has not yet been confirmed whether Van der Poel will compete in any road races between the Mountain Bike World Championships and the Road World Championships, such as the WorldTour races in Quebec and Montreal, Canada (September 11 and 13). But Van der Poel also knows: “It’s going to be a busy schedule, and so much can happen over the summer, but the plan is definitely to compete in both World Championships.”