Mathieu van der Poel may have missed his chance to become elite men's road race champion at the World Road Championships in Wollongong but the Dutch rider will be back on his bike competing for rainbow bands next weekend.
The Alpecin-Deceuninck rider is set to compete in the inaugural UCI Gravel World Championships in Italy and will go to the start line as one of the favourites, though he has revealed he only trained on a gravel bike for the first time in recent days.
"We are writing a bit of history on Sunday”, Van der Poel said. "For me my very first gravel race in my career. Although it is not completely new. I trained on the gravel bike for the first time today and it feels like something between road racing and cyclo-cross.
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"The adaptation on the bike wasn't too bad. It's mainly fun to be there. And if the feeling is okay on Sunday, we will obviously do our best to get the best possible result."
As well as being one of the top road riders in the world, Van der Poel is also four-time cyclocross world champion and has won the MTB European title during his career.
Van der Poel was involved in a well-publicised incident at his team hotel in Sydney the night before the road Worlds. He remonstrated with two young girls who repeatedly knocked on his hotel door, leading to his arrest. While he started the men's road race the following morning, he withdrew not long after the start.
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He was then convicted of two counts of assault in a Sydney court the following day and fined AUS$1,500 before returning home and admitting he was wrong to react with the girls in the way he did, but insisting he did not push them.
Ireland will be represented in the men's gravel world title race by brothers Nicolas and Alexis Roche and there will be no shortage of big names from top flight road racing on the start list.
Aside from Van der Poel, Peter Sagan and Daniel Oss (both TotalEnergies) are set to ride as well as Greg Van Avermaet (AG2R Citroën Team), Gianni Vermeersch (Alpecin-Deceuninck) and Zdenek Stybar (QuickStep-Alpha Vinyl).
The men's gravel world title race will take place next Sunday on the white gravel roads in Italy’s Veneto region. Starting in the UNESCO world heritage site of Vicenza, the route also passes close to Padua city before the big finish in the walled city of Cittadella.
About three-quarters of both the men’s and women’s courses are comprised of the Italian white gravel sections and some cobbled sections. The opening 20km includes two climbs totaling 3km – one on gravel and one paved and with gradients of about 10 per cent.
The women in all age categories and the men in the 50+ age categories will race on Saturday, on a course of 140km with 700m of ascent. The elite men will follow on Sunday over 190km with 800m of ascent: the same course as Saturday plus two laps of 25km. Men in the age groups 19-49 years will also race on Sunday, completing one extra lap for a total distance of 165km.
