In 2025, Mathieu van der Poel may decide to return to mountain biking instead of competing in the Tour de France.

It has been proposed by Mathieu van der Poel, who competes for Alpecin-Deceuninck, that he might not participate in the Tour de France in 2025 in order to focus on his mountain biking career.

In spite of the fact that he had a quiet summer and a somewhat unremarkable performance at the Tour de France, the Dutch star was able to win the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix while wearing the jersey of the road race world champion this competition season.

As a result of this, he is now considering whether or not he would be better off returning to mountain bike, or whether he wants to return the next year. “To say I was unhappy at the Tour is perhaps a little strong, but I didn’t have a good time,” Van der Poel said to the Spanish newspaper Marca while he was making an appearance at a winter criterium race in Alicante for the purpose of making an appearance.

In 2021, when I made my first appearance on the Tour, I was able to successfully put on the yellow jersey, and my hopes were really high. Despite the fact that I struggled to perform at my best during the Tour this year, I wasn’t a terrible player. Because I am aware that I perform better in one-day races, I am concentrating on those.

Despite the fact that Van der Poel has won a brilliant array of Classics on the road, including seven Monuments and a World Championship, his influence on the most important race in the world has been not very significant. Despite the fact that he made a blazing start in 2021, during which he won a stage and wore the yellow jersey, he has not been able to strike the same notes since then. He withdrew from the race in the middle of the race after the Giro d’Italia in 2022, and then he recorded a stage placing of 12th in both of the most recent editions.

After being asked if he will be participating in the Tour again in 2025, he responded, “We still don’t know. What happens during the season is a factor. I believe that now would be a good time for me to try to get back on the mountain bike, provided that I have the time to do so. “That is still a significant goal for me,” he said, “which he gave up this year and where he still has unfinished business.” Throughout the course of his multifaceted career, Van der Poel has been a consistent participant on the mountain bike circuit; yet, he has not yet won a major international title. This year, he made the decision to not compete in the Olympics; nonetheless, the World Championships continue to be a significant goal for his career, not the least of which is the fact that his collection of rainbow jerseys has grown over the past few years. In addition to the six world championships in cyclocross that he already possesses, Van der Poel also won the road race championship the previous year and only recently secured an eighth rainbow jersey in the newly introduced discipline of gravel. If he were to win the mountain bike competition somewhere during the summer of next year, he would become a world champion in four distinct categories.

As of right now, there is still no clarification regarding whether or not Van der Poel will return to the cyclo-cross circuit, which is where the season has only recently begun. However, he does have decisions to make this winter as well as ones to make for the summer of next year.

“I still don’t know,” he stated his uncertainty. “We’ve still not decided, so we’ll see.”