“Sometimes, it looks really easy,” Mathieu van der Poel drolly explained in his press conference after he had won stage nine of the 2026 Tour de France in Ussel. It’s true, when the Dutchman has powered away to victory at at Monuments, at umpteen Classics, at the Tour before, it has looked simple.
However, on a sweltering day in the Corrèze département on Sunday, it looked anything but easy. This wasn’t Playstation cycling but riders at their limit on a brutal course which never seemed flat. For Alpecin-Premier Tech, too, this Tour has not looked to date – no stage win for their star sprinter Jasper Philipsen, and frustration at his lack of form. It was not a day to be putting your body in this much stress, really, but that’s what the 176 riders left in the race are paid to do.
Alpecin’s mood changed on stage nine, as Van der Poel made it into the break, which was never allowed much of a lead by the peloton, and then survived to the finish. In a group of four that made it to the finish, alongside Tobias Halland Johannessen (Uno-X Mobility), Tom Pidcock (Pinarello-Q36.5 and Alex Baudin (EF Education-EasyPost), Van der Poel was always going to be the favourite, especially after the chasing peloton had forced them to ride hard. He delivered.
“Like I said this morning the most difficult part is to get into the breakaway on a day like this,” he said post-race. “In the first hour of the race I didn’t feel so great, but then the legs became better and better, and then when I was in the break I became more confident because in the end, the heat wasn’t affecting me that much. It was a very difficult day, because the gap was never big to the bunch.”
Despite his sparkling palmarès, the Tour hasn’t always been a happy hunting ground for Van der Poel, who has expressed his dislike of the giant July jamboree; coincidentally, his break companion Pidcock has said similar things before.
To stave off the boredom perhaps, then, Van der Poel forced his way into the group of 16 riders who made it up the road before being the protagonist of the final split, on the climb of Mont Bessou, 25km from the finish. According to the Dutchman, none of this was planned out.
(Image credit: Getty Images)
“I don’t really do it, I’m more a guy who looks day by day to the profile and also how I feel,” he said. “You make a plan before the Tour, but if you saw a stage like [Mads] Pedersen won [stage four to Foix], you can try and make a plan but if you don’t have the legs it’s really difficult to execute. I just see it day by day and try to take my chances when I get it.”
The 31-year-old has hardly had a bad season, with five wins so far, but there has not been the usual Flanders or Roubaix, and Alpecin have gone empty-handed at this year’s Tour so far.
“It’s only my third victory so it shows how hard it is for me to win a stage at the Tour,” Van der Poel argued. “It’s always special to win one. Sometimes, it looks really easy because we always succeeded in winning a Monument or winning sprints at the Tour, but we know it will not always come that easy. Keep working, keep believing in it. We do our best, and that’s all we can do.”
As for the team, they are “not panicking”. “We have a very nice group here. It’s always nice at the dinner table in the evening, and when you’re in this race you cannot change that much anymore you just need to be patient and keep going everything right hopefully things turn our way. It did today and hopefully we can win another stage with Jasper in the coming weeks.”
No panic, all power is the way forward for Van der Poel, and it worked on a lumpy stage nine. One could see it working again at this Tour, now he knows his form is there.
