Van der Poel Trades Flanders’ Chill for Spanish Sun Ahead of Paris-Roubaix
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It’s not exactly a beach vacation or a post-race celebration after his stunning solo victory at this year’s Tour of Flanders, but rather than stick around the gloomy gray that tends to define the Flanders area during March and April, Mathieu Van der Poel is off to Spain... for a couple of days, anyway. Just hours after his historic win, Van der Poel was on a plane heading to the southern coast of Spain for some training prior to tackling Paris-Roubaix next weekend.
He’s earned it. “I admit that I was frozen,” he said of his race in Flanders when speaking to dhnet.be post-race, and he told Sporza that it was the hardest race he’d ever ridden.
The Calpe region where he prefers training is south of Valencia, much further south than Girona, Spain’s other cycling hotbed. In Calpe, temperatures are warm this week, ranging from mid-40s to low-70s with a fair bit of sunshine. Compare that to the Flanders area, which shows all rain all the time and temps in the low-40s to low-50s through the weekend, and it’s a no-brainer that he’d seek out sunnier skies and drier roads.
Unlike some of his fellow pros who share everything on Strava (we see you and we love you), Van der Poel is a bit cagier about his training and hasn’t posted anything since early January. TBD whether he posts any of his sunny rides there or on Instagram.
He was also cagey about his training plan for the week when asked by reporters, telling dhnet.be that he would take training day by day and that he was feeling some fatigue from the racing thus far in the Classics season. Who can blame him?
However, cycling fans will be thrilled to know that he’s considering extending his Classics campaign to include Liège-Bastogne-Liège on April 21, following Paris-Roubaix next Sunday and the Amstel Gold race the following weekend. While he told Sporza that Flanders “suited him best,” he added that Liège-Bastogne-Liège isn’t as suited for him... but don’t count him out. “I am realistic enough to know that I probably won’t be able to follow when they are at the top,” he said. “But the race still has to be run. You never know what race situation will arise.”
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