Mathieu van der Poel also has to look in the mirror himself

Analysis

How did it come to be that the Dutch World Cup favorite had to spend the night before the title fight in a police cell? The story sounds so incredible that even his teammates thought Mathieu van der Poel was joking when he informed them about his arrest just before the start. Who is to blame in this bizarre incident?

The world championships in distant Australia. Good for the globalization of cycling. Good for the war treasury of the international cycling union UCI, but a tragedy for the treasurers of the national cycling associations. It is known from the Dutch cycling association KNWU that the financial situation has been dramatic in recent years. Feel free to call it a result of the federation’s mismanagement for many years.

According to Eurosport the costs of this trip for the KNWU amounted to about two hundred thousand euros. Half of this had to be paid to the hotel: the Novotel on the Grand Parade in Brighton-le-Sands, south of Sydney at the airport. A short one and a half hour drive from the trail in Wollongong.

Australians on the spot thought it was strange that the Dutch team sat so far from the World Cup course. Especially because the booking was made on December 10 last year and there were still plenty of alternatives at the time. Ellen van Dijk and Annemiek van Vleuten also thought this was too far with a view to the global title battle against the chronometers. They booked an apartment near Wollongong in the five days leading up to the World Cup time trial and only reported to the orange hotel in Sydney that Sunday evening.

Mathieu van der Poel also arrived on Sunday. He initially wanted to drive the Primus Classic after the GP Wallonia on Saturday, so he only booked the trip to the other side of the world after that race in the evening. In the end, he didn’t race that race, but he did stick to his travel schedule. To make the ‘late’ journey as smooth as possible, he even paid an upgrade to First Class (ticket normally around 20,000 euros). In itself, that trip a week before the global title fight should not be a problem. From a jet lag point of view, a seven-day stay is enough for a top athlete to get used to the eight-hour time difference.

catch a cold
In the hotel, Van der Poel was assigned to a room with Jan Maas. Because he arrived slightly cold, he asked national coach Koos Moerenhout if he could sleep in a room with his girlfriend Roxanne. In this way he was also better able to adapt to the time difference by going to bed earlier than his teammates who had been camping in ‘Down Under’ for some time. Moerenhout had no problem with this. This allowed him to prevent more riders in his selection from getting a cold.

Because the KNWU had not rented any special corridors in the large airport hotel, it was not surprising that the leader of the Dutch team was now on a different floor than most of the other riders. It is not at all strange that there are other people in the same corridor in a cyclist’s hotel. Even in the Corona Tour of 2020, when the team bubbles were still very strictly observed, this was the case. At the time, for example, I slept two rooms in the Novotel in Voreppe next to the later winner Tadej Pogacar.

Where Van der Poel immediately drives a good Mixed-Relay TTT, he also stays in the hotel room with his girlfriend during the following days towards the road race. Now we live in 2022 and women around the race are no longer such a strange phenomenon as in the years when Peter Post, Lomme Driessens and Jan Raas, among others, ruled with a heavy hand. They called women in a racing hotel poison for their drivers.

On the other hand, you may wonder whether it is beneficial for the group process if a rider’s girlfriend also stays in the same hotel during a World Cup. Suppose all eight riders from a national selection would have their wife/girlfriend in the hotel and would sleep in the room with them. You can never forge unity that way.

You can point out that this preferential treatment of the great champions is an evolution in cycling. That they have special privileges. But these champions actually cut themselves in the fingers when they build half a bond with their teammates.

This certainly counts within a national selection. After all, Van der Poel is only on the road with this seven for a few days this year and therefore hardly knows most of these orange teammates. Then it can’t really be the case that you have to divide the scarce time you have for a World Cup between your team and your girlfriend. In the days before a World Cup you have to invest in your national team and realize that there are always special laws in such a championship. As a leader, you benefit the most when a unit is forged.

shelf
Also think of last year’s Olympics, when Van der Poel arrived much later than his teammates for the mountain bike race in Tokyo. He was not aware at the time that the board at the ‘drop’ was removed during the competition day, unlike during training. The national coach and his teammates later indicated that they had discussed this extensively at the table. Apparently, “MVDP” was somewhere else on his mind at the time than his teammates’ conversation.

It is of course extremely annoying that there is noise in the hotel corridor at half past ten in the evening. It is completely understandable that Van der Poel became angry because these children (girls of 13 and 14 years old) also started to cringe by knocking on his door. It is a logical reaction that he, in his own words, was going to get ‘not very friendly stories’ from both of them. In retrospect it is very easy to say that he should have called someone from the KNWU or the reception of the hotel. Of course this would have been the most sensible thing to do.

The big question remains what happened in that corridor on the ninth floor. Van der Poel claims that it has only been an altercation or scolding. If this is all that happened, then he can’t be blamed. However, the police statement states that both girls indicate that he pushed them. One of the girls is said to have fallen to the floor, while the other hit the wall and suffered a scrape on her elbow. In any case, it was reason enough for the girls (or their parents) to alert the hotel management and the police.

If he pushed, then Van der Poel made a mistake. There is no doubt about that. For the time being, however, it is Van der Poel’s word against the word of both girls. It may seem an exaggeration that he was held in a cell until four in the morning at the Kogarah Police Station for this incident. In Australia, however, they take these declarations very seriously. Especially when young girls file this complaint. If there is a chance that both girls have really been harassed, then such an incident is taken extremely seriously. Especially because violence against young women in Australia has come under a magnifying glass in recent years.

Van der Poel warned national coach Koos Moerenhout from his hotel room at 10.45 pm after the incident. He immediately went to his captain’s room, but the damage was done by then. Moerenhout then offered to accompany him to the police station, but the joint decision was made that his team manager Christoph Roodhooft from Alpecin-Deceuninck (who stayed in another hotel) and his girlfriend Roxanne would assist him there. Yet it is strange that the KNWU has not sent anyone from their delegation. After all, Van der Poel falls under the responsibility of the Dutch association during the World Cup period. Chef de mission Jan van Veen was the right person for this, but he himself states that he was only informed of the incident in the morning.

It is understandable that Moerenhout then decides not to inform the other riders/coaches of his team until as late as possible. That way, during breakfast and during the journey to the start in Helensburgh, the focus could remain on the race. After all, we are still talking about the World Cup, the most important one-day race of the year. In the end it was Van der Poel himself who informed his teammates in the camper about his nocturnal ‘adventure’ just before the start.

Role KNWU
There are more questions about the role of chef de mission Jan van Veen. He is responsible for the organization of the entire group during this World Cup. And it is precisely in the organization that the KNWU has, as usual, dropped several stitches this week. The incidents around the junior women at this World Cup alone are unprecedented.

The parents of these 17- and 18-year-old girls have already had to ring the bell with the KNWU that their children had to check in at the airport for the long journey without being accompanied by someone from the KNWU. In the end, the association decided to send someone to Schiphol. Good thing too, because it turned out that no fewer than nine bicycles had not been paid for for the long flight. Three elite women were eventually tasked with keeping an eye on these young girls during the journey.

In Australia, the juniors, who did not drive the time trial, spent an hour and a half in the car to train in Wollongong. Once there, it was discovered that the guides of the union had forgotten their bicycles in the hotel…

And in the race, the junior women were not assisted by their national coach Loes van Gunnewijk because she did not have time. This task was left to Peter Zijerveld, who will be employed by the KNWU until 2020, who happened to be present in ‘Down Under’ because he has family living there.

These are incidents that raise eyebrows. Anyone who has been on the road with the KNWU in recent years, however, does not know otherwise. Next month, former politician Wouter Bos will be chairman of the cycling association for another year. In the conversations he had with various stakeholders regarding his election, he promised to show a hard hand. So far, however, Bos has excelled in invisibility. And so the KNWU continues to struggle. And the sum of all embarrassing incidents just keeps getting bigger.