Mathieu van der Poel was celebrating victory in one of the biggest mountain bike races in the world on Sunday, but just a couple of days on the Dutchman finds himself back on the thin tyres and stiff carbon of his road bike, eyeing one of road cycling´s biggest prizes in just over a month´s time. Van der Poel, the cyclo-cross world champion who had a sensational debut Spring Classics campaign for Corendon-Circus on the road, has been racing his mountain bike over the summer, winning no fewer than three rounds of the World Cup. He has made a breakthrough in the discipline, to the extent that he feels he`s finally on a par with Nino Schurter, yet he`s bypassing the MTB Worlds in order to target the Road Worlds, with the Yorkshire course on September 29 representing too good an opportunity to pass up. Van der Poel arrived in Svolvær in northern Norway on Tuesday for the 2019 Arctic Race of Norway, his first outing on the road since he won Amstel Gold Race in April. The four-day race, where he won two stages last year, begins on Thursday and was preceded on Wednesday by a sea eagle-watching expedition, which Van der Poel declined due to the wet and windy conditions.ADVERTISEMENT `This is a race to get back on the road bike and get a good feeling again on the road. The shape is pretty good - otherwise you don`t win a mountain bike World Cup - but this is different. The stages are much longer. I haven`t done any long rides in the past few weeks, so that`s going to be the hardest thing,` Van der Poel said. `It`s quite a big adaptation, so it`s going to be a shock to the body. It`s going to be strange to be back on a road bike again but normally it only takes me one or two days to get the good feeling back.` Van der Poel, 24, has already demonstrated his ability to flit seamlessly between the three disciplines. After a winter of cyclo-cross domination, culminating in the world title, he hit the road and immediately slotted in as one of the very top spring Classics ...
|
