Mathieu van der Poel had a solid return to MTB in Les Gets: 'It hurt more than I would have liked'

Mathieu van der Poel made his return to mountain biking on Friday in Les Gets after an 11-month hiatus. In fact, the Dutch rider competed in his first short race in five years. Van der Poel set a goal for himself to finish in the top 16 ahead of Sunday’s race and succeeded with flying colors: he placed tenth. Here’s what he had to say afterward.

Van der Poel was in the last starting row, so he knew he’d have to pass at least 25 riders. After barely a minute, he had already passed 15 of them, but that took a lot out of him. “Man, it was… really painful. I expected it to be painful, but it hurt more than I’d have liked, haha,” were his first words in the flash interview.

"Having to use up my energy so early on was tough. It was kind of the plan to move up to the middle of the pack as quickly as possible. Because, well, I knew that after the last rock garden, the course would just be one long, drawn-out stretch. I couldn’t really recover, so it was just a whole race of suffering.”

Van der Poel eventually moved up to sixth place, dropped to fourteenth due to a miscalculation, and ultimately finished the race in tenth place. “These are the kinds of efforts I need. Sunday will, of course, be a completely different story than today, but still… it was definitely a painful comeback.”

Before the race, Van der Poel had already spoken about the cross-country race, in which he’ll be starting from the second row. “Sunday will be the first real test to see where I stand on the mountain bike. Next week at the World Championships in Val di Sole, I won’t be racing the XCC. The rules are different there, so I’ll have to start the XCO from the fifth row anyway. That obviously won’t make it any easier.”

"The strategy for Sunday will depend on how I feel and how my legs are that day. The key will be not to burn out. That’s the most important thing. Les Gets is just below the altitude where it really starts to have an impact, but you do feel it a bit when you go really deep,” said Van der Poel.