Mathieu van der Poel becomes world road cycling champion in Glasgow

Aug 18, 2023

Mathieu van der Poel of the Netherlands won an attritional and dramatic men’s UCI World Road Race title in Glasgow, surviving an environmental protest, a high-speed crash and a broken racing shoe to claim the first road racing rainbow jersey of his career.

“It means everything,” the Dutchman said of his title. “It was one of the biggest goals I had left and to win it today was amazing. It almost completes my career, in my opinion. It’s maybe my biggest victory on the road.”

The 28-year-old, who comes from a dynasty of world champions and Tour de France legends, attacked from a highly select quartet of contenders that included the double Tour de France winner Tadej Pogacar of Slovenia, the former world race champion Mads Pedersen, racing for Denmark, and the former world cyclo‑cross champion Wout van Aert of Belgium.

Van der Poel, winner of the UCI world cyclo cross title this year, made his decisive move with 22 kilometres of the 271km race – which was held up by almost an hour in the Carron Valley because of a protest by environmental activists – remaining.

“I knew this was the hardest moment,” he said of his decisive attack, “especially because we had a downhill and then a ‘bump’. I noticed the race was a bit ‘on the limit’ but then saw nobody was following me. That gave me wings and I was flying.”

But he was flying too low and his hopes looked dashed on the penultimate lap, when he slid to the tarmac on a right-hand bend. Bloodied on one side and with a damaged right racing shoe, he recovered to race on and in fact increase his lead on his three pursuers.

“I was not taking risks, but all of a sudden I was on the ground,” he said. “It was super slippery. I still managed to pull it off, but if that crash had cost me the world title, I would not have slept for a couple of days.”

The gruelling race, which started with 193 riders in the peloton, ended with only 51 finishers after the relentlessly demanding and technical circuit race in Glasgow city centre took a brutal toll. As Van der Poel collapsed exhausted to the ground beyond the finish line, Van Aert took the silver medal ahead of Pogacar, who outsprinted Pedersen to claim bronze.

Van der Poel’s win took him full circle from the humiliation of the 2022 world championships in Australia, when he was arrested and questioned by local police after an incident in a hotel, after which he subsequently abandoned the world road race after only 45 minutes. He had been charged with two counts of common assault after a confrontation with two girls – aged 13 and 14 – who he said had repeatedly knocked on his door and then run away. He was convicted and fined A$1,500 (£825) but the sentence was overturned three months later. “It felt a bit like revenge for last year,” he said of his success.

Five people were arrested in the aftermath of the protest during the men’s road race by the campaign group This Is Rigged, which appeared to target Ineos, sponsor of the Ineos Grenadiers team, and Shell, partners with British Cycling until 2030.

In response Adam Hansen, head of the professional cyclist’s union the CPA, tweeted: “A message to the protesters. What you did in today’s race did the opposite to help the environment. While a bike race might not be the best thing for the environment, the impact of exposing people to the thought of taking up cycling is key for the environment.

“Getting more people to ride bikes means cars drive less. Also, those orange safety vests you all wear – made from petroleum – your glasses, shoe soles, plastic on the tips of shoe laces, buttons, debit/credit cards – yeah, made from Oil. Just saying.”

Further road races are still to come in the UCI World Cycling Championships, including the elite women’s road race next Sunday. The 154km race starts in Loch Lomond and finishes in central Glasgow, using six laps of the 14.3km circuit. Sources close to the event organisers have indicated route security will be stepped up.

Away from the road race, the Olympic champion Charlotte Worthington qualified for the BMX freestyle park final, while in the Sir Chris Hoy velodrome Frances Brown took gold in the C1 individual pursuit with a world‑record time.

Great Britain’s Dan Bigham just missed out on individual pursuit gold, finishing second behind his friend Filippo Ganna of Italy. He was ahead by two seconds three-quarters of the way through and up by one second with 250 metres left, only to be pipped by 0.054sec.