Does Mathieu van der Poel care about the Tour de France?

It might seem like a funny question. There's not much that can match the fervour of his 2021 debut, when the then-26-year-old dropped to the tarmac and wept into his hands after winning stage two and stepping into the maillot jaune. He'd achieved what his grandfather, Raymond Poulidor, had never managed over 14 Tour appearances, a historic legacy settled on two dramatic ascents of the Mur-de-Bretagne.

But elsewhere, it's been difficult to know. Lead-out duty calls for Van der Poel during the sprint stages of these three weeks in July. But while the Dutchman has in previous years been able to reap the rewards of his efforts in Alpecin-Premier Tech's sprint train, Jasper Philipsen's struggling form this year has denied him that celebration. And when the going gets particularly hard, when the heat is stifling and the parcours unrelenting, Van der Poel is probably left wondering what 21 days of continuous stage racing can really offer a Classics specialist. Oh to be in the dreary drizzle of Belgium!

But then there are days like stage nine to Ussel. A lumpy war of attrition destined for the breakaway – made all the more intense by a heat-induced truncation of 30 kilometres – was seemingly tailor-made for a man who thrives in the vigour of a one-day race. In the end, a quartet of Van der Poel, Tom Pidcock, Tobias Halland Johannessen and Alex Baudin was all that was left of a select breakaway which had formed after 60 kilometres. If Van der Poel had been struggling in the Tour's early stages, he at least could find a trademark surge 200 metres from the line to prevail in the finale of a cobbleless Classic au Tour.

"Actually the first hour of the race, I didn't feel so great, but then the legs became better and better," he explains to journalists after the stage. "And then when I finally was in the break, I became more confident because I felt I had a good day, and the heat was not affecting me that much."

By his own impossibly high standards, Van der Poel has not matched his usual Classics haul in 2026, failing to add to his tally of eight Monument victories. Eighth at Milan-San Remo, fourth at Roubaix, and second to Pogačar at Flanders make a win on a course suited to his skillset (four categorised bumps stacked into a relentless, rolling profile, finishing with a punchy uphill kick into Ussel) seem all the more fitting.

"It's only my third victory, which shows how hard it is for me to win a stage in a Tour. It will always be special to win one," he says. "Sometimes it looks really easy because the past seasons we always succeeded in winning a Monument or winning sprints. But yeah, we know that it will not always come that easy, of course, so that's also why we just keep working and believing. We do our best, that's all we can do. The roads were horrible for a breakaway headwind the whole day and we really fought for it."

For Alpecin, too, Van der Poel's victory today will be a sigh of relief after Jasper Philipsen came away from all three flat stages so far empty-handed. While Philipsen was forced to try and explain his fifth place result to journalists outside the team bus in Bordeaux, Van der Poel had kept his head down.

"Of course, Jasper is disappointed which is normal as well, but as a team we did a great job. I think Jasper is the one who wants to win maybe most of all. He does what he can but I think he's just on the limit before he has to wound his sprint," says Van der Poel.

"There's not much we can do about it. We have a fun group here. When you're in this race you can also not change that much anymore. You just need to be patient and keep doing everything right, and then hope it will turn our way. And it did today, and hopefully we can win another stage with Jasper as well."

For now though, it's the Classics man flying the Tour de France flag.

"Maybe it's a one-day festival, but at least it was a nice one," he smiles.