Mathieu van der Poel crashed, and later pulled out, of the MTB race at the Olympic Games today and has since said he was not aware a ramp on a drop off rocks had been removed from the course for the race.
"I was not aware," Van der Poel said. "That plank was there during the reconnaissance. I only heard that it had been removed at the test event. No I didn't know anything. Currently in hospital for X-rays. Too much trouble (pain) to finish."
His comments suggest he knew in advance the ramp or plank had been removed for the test race on the course in 2019. But because the wood was present during the recon for today's race, he believed it was staying in place for the race.
Dutch national coach, Gerben de Knegt, made a fleeting reference to the issue in a post-race interview, saying that Van der Poel had mentioned he believed the ramp was still part of the course.
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When those remarks by Dutch coach de Knegt were highlighted on Twitter by Dutch journalist with AD, Thijs Zonneveld, Van der Poel replied, sharing a photo of riders checking out the ramp in advance and confirming he was unaware it had been removed for the race.
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Dutch coach de Knegt and Milan Vader, who rode the race as a team mate of Van der Poel, said afterwards they believed Van der Poel knew the plank or ramp was being removed for the race.
“It may be hard to say, but we talked about that during lunch today,” Vader, who placed 10th in the race, told Dutch news outlet NOS.
“Mathieu said ‘gosh everyone jumps there’. I asked him,
‘won't you, then?’ He said ‘no, I'll roll off that plank’. Then I said they had
removed that board at the test event in 2019 for the race.”
Having left the Tour de France just after the first week - having won stage 2 and held the yellow jersey for a week - Van der Poel had set winning Olympic gold today as his No 1 goal of the year. However, he only arrived in Japan on Saturday.
Van der Poel crashed today coming down the jump off the rocks in the opening stages of the race, with his front wheel appearing to fall too severely to negotiate the feature successfully. And now he has effectively said he expected the ramp to break his drop.
When he crashed in the race it appeared he was instantly out of the event. However, he gathered himself and after a long time on the sideline he eventually rejoined the race, before pulling out later due to the impact of the crash.
He was about one minute off the leaders for about four laps but was eventually forced out of the race, which was won by his main rival for gold, Tom Pidcock (Great Britain). He won by 20 seconds from Mathias Flueckinger (Switzerland), with David Valero Serrano (Spain) claiming bronze at 34 seconds.
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