Van der Poel skips Rwanda road worlds for mountain bike title tilt

Mathieu van der Poel said on Wednesday he will skip this year’s world road race championships in favour of a tilt at the mountain bike world crown.

The world road championships are scheduled for Rwanda in late September while the mountain bike equivalent is two weeks earlier in Crans Montana, Switzerland.

“I’d have no chance of winning out in Rwanda,” the powerfully built 30-year-old Dutch rider told reporters.

Celebrated for his all-in style of racing fearless van der Poel won the 2023 world road race and last week won the cyclo-cross world title after attacking and leading from the gun.

This would set up a potential face-off with British maverick Tom Pidcock, the double defending Olympic mountain bike cross country champion.

He will start his season with a stage race from March 10-16 at Italy’s Tirreno-Adriatico, rather than Paris-Nice, which he described as the “ideal preparation” for the ultra-long one-day race and his first targeted of objective Milan-San Remo on March 22.

Van der Poel will defend one-day cycling’s holy grail the Tour of Flanders and the cobbled mud of Paris-Roubaix in early April.

The unmissable Tour de France is once again on his programme in July.

Van der Poel has helped Alpecin team-mate Jasper Philipsen to nine stage wins on the Tour over the past three years.

“I’d like a stage win,” Van der Poel said. 

“There will be opportunities for both myself and Jasper Philipsen.”