Mathieu van der Poel x Wout van Aert: When a rivalry stops being one

They've been racing each other since they were eight years old. Through the junior ranks and into the elite, they defined cyclocross between them. Three world championships apiece by 2020. Head-to-head battles that brought thousands to Belgian fields in winter. A rivalry that felt destined to define a generation.

On the road, it looked even more promising. Van Aert took Milan-San Remo in 2020, the first Monument for either of them. Van der Poel answered with the Tour of Flanders later that year, beating Van Aert in a photo finish so close the Belgian must still see it when he closes his eyes. They traded blows. Gent-Wevelgem for Van Aert. Strade Bianche for Van der Poel. The World Championships in Glasgow, where Van der Poel rode away from everyone, including Van Aert, to claim the rainbow jersey.

That was August 2023. And it was, in retrospect, the beginning of the end.

Van der Poel has now won three Tours of Flanders, three consecutive Paris-Roubaix, Milan-San Remo twice, Road and Gravel World Champion, and seven cyclocross world titles to Van Aert's three.

Van Aert hasn't progressed beyond the one Monument: the 2020 Milan-San Remo. His Tour of Flanders record reads runner-up in 2020, absent through injury in 2024, and fourth in 2023 and 2025. At Paris-Roubaix, he was runner-up in 2022, third in 2023, didn't start in 2024 after his Dwars door Vlaanderen crash, and finished fourth in 2025.

In cyclocross, the pattern is even starker. Van der Poel won all eight races he entered in the 2024-2025 season, culminating in a seventh world championship where he finished 45 seconds clear of Van Aert. In Antwerp, at the first meeting between them this winter, Van der Poel went clear after two laps and never looked threatened. Van Aert, hampered by a puncture, finished seventh.

Two days later in Hofstade, Van der Poel again made it look effortless – one surge through the sand was enough. Van Aert claimed second, 48 seconds back. "Signs of improvement," the commentators said. But improvement towards what, exactly? Second place, 48 seconds behind, is now considered progress.

Since January 1st 2023, the rivals shared the start line of a cyclocross race 14 times. 13 times, the Dutchman ended the hour-long effort with his arms raised in the air.

The only time Van Aert beat Van der Poel outright in a cyclocross race they both finished was January 2024 in Benidorm – and even that victory came with an asterisk. Van der Poel crashed in the penultimate lap after making his way through the field from 28th place following an early mechanical. He finished fifth, 12 seconds back. "After the sand pit I hit a spot, I thought it was a bit softer but it was not," Van der Poel said afterwards. "I was on the ground and I knew the race was over."

Van Aert won that day. But he didn't beat Van der Poel. There's a difference.

Some of this is simply bad luck. Van Aert has been plagued by crashes at the worst possible moments. Dwars door Vlaanderen 2024, where he fractured his collarbone and several ribs, ruling him out of the spring. The Vuelta 2024, stage 16, where he crashed on a wet descent and abandoned with severe knee injuries. These aren't minor setbacks. They're career-altering interruptions that require months of rehabilitation, that steal preparation time and race fitness and, crucially, momentum.

Van der Poel has had his own injury struggles – the back problems that haunted him in 2021, rib pain that forced him to skip races in late 2024. But somehow he bounces back with victories. When he returned to cyclocross in December 2024, he won in Zonhoven, then won every race that followed. When Van Aert returned from his Vuelta crash to contest cyclocross in January 2025, he won at Gullegem and Dendermonde. Good results. But Van der Poel wasn't there.

The few times they've met this season, the outcome has been decisive. At the 2025 Paris-Roubaix, Van Aert finished fourth, 2:11 behind Van der Poel. He admitted afterwards: "In the Arenberg, I just didn't have the legs." A week before, at the Tour of Flanders, even a Van der Poel, experiencing illness, finished ahead of Van Aert. That other Monument man, Tadej Pogacar, dominated that day.

What makes this shift particularly cruel is that Van Aert remains an extraordinary cyclist. He's won stages at all three Grand Tours. He claimed the green jersey at the 2022 Tour de France. He's triumphed at E3 Saxo Classic and Gent-Wevelgem. He's still capable of brilliance, still one of the most versatile riders in the peloton, still dangerous in sprints, time trials and on the cobbles alike.

But brilliance and versatility aren't quite the same as dominance. And dominance is what Van der Poel now wields in the Monuments that matter most to cycling – and, by extension, to Van Aert. The Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix represent the absolute pinnacle for any Flemish rider. Van der Poel has won both three times each. Van Aert has won neither.

Van Aert turned 31 in September. Van der Poel will turn 31 in January. Neither rider is old by cycling standards, but the window for Monument victories doesn't stay open forever. And with Tadej Pogačar now contesting the cobbled Classics – finishing second at Paris-Roubaix 2025, winning the Tour of Flanders 2025 – that window is narrowing from both sides.

For Van Aert, the challenge is threefold. First, he needs to stay healthy through an entire spring campaign, something that hasn't happened since 2023. Second, he needs to find the form that made him Van der Poel's equal in 2020 and 2021, when their battles felt genuinely uncertain. And third, he needs to do all of this while racing against a version of Van der Poel who seems to have transcended even his own previous standards.

At Hofstade, Van Aert spoke cautiously about his progress. He's improving, he said. Getting closer to his best. The crashes are behind him now, the knee has healed, the form is building. Second place felt like a step forward. But 48 seconds is still 48 seconds, and Van der Poel made the winning move look as natural as breathing.

The great rivalries in cycling live on in memory precisely because they're balanced. Anquetil and Poulidor. Merckx and De Vlaeminck. Hinault and LeMond. They're remembered not for dominance but for duels, for uncertainty, for the sense that on any given day, either man could win.

Van Aert and Van der Poel had that once. Between 2015 and 2022, across cyclocross fields and cobbled roads, they traded victories with a rhythm that felt almost mathematical. But somewhere in the past two years, the equation changed. Van der Poel found another gear – or Van Aert lost one – and the distance between them widened from seconds to minutes.

A rivalry requires parity. What we have now is a record of what used to be, and the fading hope that it might somehow return. Van Aert will keep racing, keep trying, keep chasing Van der Poel through the Flemish fields and over the cobbles of northern France. But unless something changes – injury, form, fate – the question is no longer who will win.

It's whether Van Aert can even get close enough to make us believe again.