Mathieu Van der Poel pulls himself out of the meanders of Glasgow to become world road champion – Liberation

The Dutch rider won this Sunday, August 6 at the end of an urban circuit with bends, designed to showcase his qualities as a cyclo-cross champion.

It took the qualities of a cyclo-cross racer to win in Glasgow, this Sunday August 6, during the men’s road race of the 2023 World Cycling Championships. Those of Mathieu Van der Poel are well established, he who has been crowned world champion in the discipline five times, the last time last winter. Here he is now titled on the road: the Dutchman has won alone in Scotland to adorn himself with the rainbow tunic. His best enemy, the Belgian Wout Van Aert, climbs on the second of the podium. Slovenian Tadej Pogacar takes the bronze medal. For Mathieu Van der Poel, the victory looks like the icing on the cake of an exceptional season, which has already seen Raymond Poulidor’s grandson swallow two Monuments of cycling: Milan-San Remo and Paris-Roubaix. Even the ogre Eddy Merckx has never managed to pile up these three victories in the same year.

Mathieu Van der Poel got out of a route in the form of a hell of a bag of knots. Much commented on, the course of these World Championships has caused ink, saliva and perhaps stout to flow, according to Remco Evenepoel and Benoît Cosnefroy. For the Belgian defending champion, “the guy who drew it may have been hanging around the pub too long”, when the French puncher felt that the person “was drunk and in addition, no one said to him” you left too much away in your delirium”. Because to win in Glasgow, you had to emerge unscathed from an urban circuit covered ten times with 48 right-angle turns and short restarts, alternating climbs and descents. Hoping not to see his chain jump because of a manhole cover, a badly filled pothole or a change of coating. In fact, the mechanical incidents have multiplied, one of them being fatal to Christophe Laporte, the best French chance on paper, 100 terminals from the finish.

Shirt and shorts torn

The demanding course acted as a wringer, very quickly putting the peloton in single file. At the back, the riders stalled little by little, in bunches, like overripe grapes, before, for many, giving up. At the front, the strongest got combed very early in the race, causing acceleration and breaks, even before the morning breakaway was resumed some 75 km from the end. Of the nine couriers who had taken off early on in the Scottish countryside, before the race was interrupted for almost an hour by environmental activists and then set off again, the Australian Matthew Dinham and the Latvian Krists Neilands were the last to be able to hang with the strongest.

Then, as if that weren’t enough, the rain came to the party, just to remind everyone of the charms of Scotland in August. The slippery road sent the Ecuadorian Jhonatan Narváez into the barriers, while the precipitation finished rinsing the runners still in the race after more than 200 terminals. Not enough to discourage the Italian Alberto Bettiol, who left solo but probably a little early (55 km from the finish). Behind him, a square of aces ended up coming out of the round: Wout Van Aert, Mathieu Van der Poel, Mads Pedersen and Tadej Pogacar. Then the sun reappeared and Mathieu Van der Poel got up on the pedals 22 kilometers from the line. The royal road seemed to open up to him, but it remained slippery: in turn, the Dutchman skidded in a bend and went on the asphalt. A few scrapes and seconds later he was off again, the dangling clasp of a shoe as a witness to the incident. Jersey and shorts torn, Van der Poel ended up tearing off this annoying lace before heading straight for his dream.