'I never plan my attacks... I always just go on instinct'

After another sensational season, Mathieu van der Poel tells Lawrence Ostlere he's hungry to add to his sole stage win at the Tour de France following years of frustration in the race

- Lawrence Ostlere

Perhaps the most enduring image of the cycling season so far is Mathieu van der Poel standing on the finish line of the Tour of Flanders with mud splattered down his crisp, white world champion's jersey, raising his bike to the sky like an offering to the gods. Here was a rider so utterly dominant over a world-class field that he had time to hop off for some showmanship, and somehow still with the strength to lift his bike like paper after such a brutal ride.

It was, as it turned out, his last drop of energy. “It’s one of the hardest races I’ve ever done,” Van der Poel said. He was asked if he could repeat the feat at Paris-Roubaix a week later. “I cannot think about Roubaix yet. I’m really, really fucked.”

He would go on to complete the double in equally emphatic style, becoming only the third man this century to win Flanders and Roubaix in the same year. Only nine men in the history of the sport have won more than his six Monument races and, aged 29, there is plenty of time to climb the list. “Now it seems obvious that I am capable of winning another one but you never know what happens in cycling, of course, with injury or...” Van der Poel is scratching his head for anything else that might stop him, and he can’t come up with much. “You only get one opportunity a year to win each Monument, but I think I have some more in me. So we’ll see where I can end up.”

Both races were won with typically aggressive solo attacks that obliterated the field. Van der Poel is a master of this, of sensing the moment – the conditions, the weather, the distance, the feeling in his legs, the look in his rival’s eyes – and knowing when to go. “It’s more art than science,” he says. “I never really plan my attacks. I always go on feel and how the race is developing. It’s just instinct to choose my moment, to feel the race a bit, and I think it’s one of my strengths. Then it’s basically just head down and go as fast as possible.”