Mathieu van der Poel was way off his best at the Tour de France before deciding to abandon the race on stage 11 and now he believes overdoing altitude training was likely to blame for his below par performance.
His withdrawal from the Tour didn’t stop him racing, and winning, at the post-Tour criterium last night in Boxmeer in his native Holland.
The 27-year-old Alpecin-Deceuninck rider also rode the Giro this year, winning the opening stage and then holding the maglia rosa for three days. He then rode very hard later in the race, spending between 60km and 160km in breakaways on five stages and ended the race with 3rd in the final TT.
And while many commentators speculated Van der Poel was simply not recovered enough from the Giro when he went into the Tour, he does not think that is the case.
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Instead, he believes training at altitude between the Giro and Tour – perhaps too soon after the Giro – was likely at the root of his disappointing form on the Tour.
"I mainly think that something went wrong with the altitude training after the Giro towards the Tour," Van der Poel told Dutch media outlet NSO. “I didn't feel like I came out of the Giro completely empty, on the contrary.
“Perhaps my body was still recovering and not sufficiently recovered at altitude. If you do that after a big tour, if you may need more recovery than you think, your body may come out of the altitude stage more wrung out than better. Not one hundred percent sure, but I have the feeling that it has to do with that, yes.”
He also said he was keen not to linger on his Tour performance as he wanted to move on and think about the rest of the season.
“Of course, we have to look at where things went wrong, but then we have to let it rest and set new goals,” he said, adding he was unlikely to be in good form for the Europeans in Munich next month but would more likely be back to form at the Worlds in September in Australia.
