The season is in full swing for Mathieu van der Poel. After the Cyclocross season the Dutchman will do the Flemish Classics, the Tour, the Olympic Games and the World Championship. Despite all the apparent agitation, the world champion reveals himself as a calm person and reveals that this is one of his greatest strengths.
Concern only about the car
“Mathieu only worries if there is a scratch on his car,” Alpecin-Deceuninck team boss Christoph Roodhooft once said.
“I don’t lose sleep over anything. Not even because of pressure or opinions from the outside world. Maybe more in the past, but after all the good and bad experiences I learned to put it aside,” MVDP told Belgian magazine Knack.
Girlfriend is one of the World Champion’s supporters
The strong woman behind Mathieu van der Poel is Roxanne Bertels. The two live together in Antwerp, and met in Finland. Van der Poel once went there to drive a Porsche on ice and Roxanne was there as a Porsche dealer.
They haven’t married yet and don’t have children yet, but Van der Poel reveals the importance of Bertels in her life: “If everyone were like Roxanne, we would live in a much better world.”
Netflix before bed
“We like to go to bed at nine o’clock. We had fun watching some series on Netflix together. Now I also realize how important it is to rest after an intense workout.”
“In the past, when I trained much less and was just a Cyclocross athlete, it was much more difficult for me to go to bed before this time.
In Spain without Playstation
“Now everything works much better. Here in Spain I don’t even have my PlayStation with me, but I used to play Fortnite for several hours”, says the Dutchman with a smile on his face.
Event in Australia shattered the tranquility
Of course, there wasn’t always peace and quiet. The low point was his withdrawal from the 2022 World Championships, when children kept knocking on his hotel room door and he was arrested, after allegedly injuring one of them’s arm.
“Roxanne saw what really happened in Australia. And how unjustified this arrest was. This had as profound an impact on her as it did on me. She takes care of me, sympathizes with me and wanted to be world champion as much as I do”, concluded Mathieu Van der Poel.
