What makes Van der Poel's time trial style so special? 'They've genuinely studied it'

How good was Mathieu van der Poel in the Tour de Suisse time trial? The Alpecin-Premier Tech Dutchman missed out on the stage win to Tadej Pogacar by the narrowest of margins, but we've genuinely never seen a time trial like that from the runner-up before. Thijs Zonneveld is full of admiration, and explains what makes Van der Poel's style so special.

It's not the first good time trial Van der Poel has produced. "We've obviously seen him ride some fantastic time trials," Zonneveld says on his podcast In De Waaier. "Sometimes. That first time at the Tour, for instance, when he rode a time trial in yellow... That was so absurdly good, it made no sense at all. He finished fifth, thirty seconds behind Pogacar. He'd never even sat on a time trial bike before."

But he does have the build for it. "That he can produce huge amounts of power is completely clear. But he's never really focused on time trials. Still, he finished fifth twice in a Tour time trial, came third in the final Giro time trial, and second in the opening time trial in Budapest. But there have also been years where he's barely ridden any time trials at all."

"The focus has shifted even more towards the Classics and cyclocross," the analyst explains. "And how much time can you really spend on a time trial bike if you're also going to be mountain biking? Last year he finished eighteenth in the Tour time trial, and that was when he actually had yellow — he had to go for it then. That was okay, but nothing special. Over 36 minutes, Pogacar put a minute and a half into him."

That the gap is now just 31 hundredths of a second is a huge improvement. And it's not as if Pogacar isn't on form — he seems to have his own house in order. "So what he's doing today really is quite special. When you see how close he is to Pogacar now, while he can't possibly have spent much time on this..."

Zonneveld knows exactly where Van der Poel gains the most. "If you watch him go through corners in that time trial... It's partly technique, and partly just really going for it. When he really commits, it's genuinely fascinating to watch. It's really interesting to see how he takes corners. It's not that he goes into corners flat out, brakes hard and then throws himself into the bend — his exit speed is extremely good."

It's a remarkable skill of the Dutchman's, one that undoubtedly stems from his background as a cyclo-cross and mountain bike rider. "He uses the entire width of the road, always. We see that on the road bike and the cyclo-cross bike, and therefore on the time trial bike too. But that does mean you sometimes enter the corner less aggressively. It doesn't mean you should just throw yourself into corners, because that doesn't necessarily mean you go faster."

What Van der Poel does is, according to Zonneveld, hard to copy. "It's obviously an innate skill. He's clearly done it a lot, of course, but you simply can't train to be as good at it as he is. You can learn part of it, pay attention to it. But what he's doing is graduate-level cornering."

Van der Poel's cornering is so good that rivals have made a real study of it, Zonneveld reveals. "At Visma | Lease a Bike, they've genuinely studied it: what's so special about Van der Poel's cornering? What they found was that he comes out of corners much faster. Faster even than Van Aert, who's also a fantastic descender and corner specialist."

It's also the major reason Van der Poel is a three-time Paris-Roubaix champion, where, according to Zonneveld, it's best seen of all. "There, it's partly about really throwing caution to the wind and daring to go for it, but with him it never goes wrong. He rides over spectators' shoelaces, he genuinely uses the entire width of the road. He also lets the bike run once he's past the apex of the corner. You need a huge amount of control over the bike to do that."

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