Van der Poel wants Tour de France yellow again but feels no pressure: ‘Everything is a bonus’

The circumstances are different this time. So is Van der Poel.

Now 31, he is preparing for his sixth Tour de France appearance. He will arrive in Barcelona as one of the most decorated riders of his generation, no longer driven by the need to validate his talent or add a missing prize to his record.

“Everything that comes now is a bonus,” Van der Poel told NOS. “Nothing has to happen anymore. My career has already been more than successful.”

That sense of freedom does not mean his ambition has disappeared. Van der Poel still wants victories, spectacle and another spell in yellow. He simply knows that his legacy no longer depends on any of them.

Van der Poel has never hidden his ambivalent feelings about the Tour. “It’s not a race I particularly enjoy,” he told Sporza in an interview published in January 2025, explaining that his personal opportunities are largely limited to stage wins and spells in the yellow jersey.

“It’s a race that I don’t really like,” he said in early 2025, explaining that beyond winning stages and wearing yellow, the Tour offers relatively few rewards for a rider with his particular qualities. He would rather enter a handful of races with a realistic chance of winning than spend three weeks contesting only selected stages.

That ambivalence made his Tour debut in 2021 all the more significant. Victory on the Mûr de Bretagne did not suddenly make the Tour his favourite race, but it gave the event a deeply personal significance.

Van der Poel attacked twice on the final climb, won the second stage and claimed the yellow jersey. The victory carried particular weight because his grandfather, French cycling icon Raymond Poulidor, had never worn yellow despite finishing on the Tour podium eight times.

Van der Poel remained in the leader’s jersey for six days.

The 2026 race presents a less straightforward route towards another yellow jersey. Instead of an opening stage suited to an explosive rider, the Tour begins in Barcelona with a 19.7 kilometre team time trial. Alpecin-Premier Tech has spent considerable time preparing for the discipline, although Van der Poel is realistic about the team’s chances of beating the strongest time trial formations.

The immediate objective is survival rather than victory. If Van der Poel can stay close enough to the first race leader, stage two offers a more natural opportunity.

That 168.5 kilometre stage travels from Tarragona to Barcelona and includes three late ascents of the Côte du Château de Montjuïc. The climb is 1.6 kilometres long at an average gradient of 9.3 per cent, making it suitable for Van der Poel’s combination of power and acceleration.

There is one obvious complication. Tadej Pogačar, Jonas Vingegaard and Remco Evenepoel are also expected to contest the finale.

“If riders like that make it a major target, it becomes extremely difficult,” Van der Poel said. “But we are going to try.”

Van der Poel received a fresh reminder of Pogačar’s extraordinary range during the Tour de Suisse. He produced one of the strongest time trials of his professional career and appeared set for his first victory against the clock, only for Pogačar to beat him by 0.31 seconds over 23.7 kilometres.

Rather than spending the afternoon searching for the fraction of a second that had cost him, Van der Poel laughed about it. Even on a flat time trial, he suggested, there was no escaping riders of Pogačar’s calibre.

More importantly, the performance confirmed that his preparation for the Tour had worked.

“I prefer to look at the positive side,” he said. “The time trial showed that we have done good work over the past few weeks.”

The time trial also produced an unexpected aftermath and attracted considerable attention when Van der Poel was fined for sitting shirtless in the hot seat while waiting for the remaining riders to finish.

A few years ago, a defeat by such a small margin might have bothered him for much longer. This time, Van der Poel was able to laugh about it. He still expects a great deal from himself and still wants to win the biggest races, but he no longer seems to carry every setback with him.

The Tour has already given him more than enough moments to look back on. The 2026 edition will be his sixth appearance, following starts in every Tour since his debut in 2021. He has won two stages, both on stage two: the Mûr de Bretagne in 2021 and Boulogne sur Mer in 2025.

He has also spent ten days in the yellow jersey. Six came during his debut Tour and four more followed in 2025, when he defeated Pogačar in Boulogne sur Mer and later reclaimed the race lead through an exhausting breakaway. That total places him third among Dutch riders, behind Wout Wagtmans with 12 days and Joop Zoetemelk with 22.

His 2025 Tour ended prematurely when pneumonia forced him to withdraw before stage 16. Until then, Van der Poel had been one of the race’s main protagonists, winning a stage, wearing yellow and spending several days on the attack.

He would like to start this year’s Tour in the same form. Apart from the stage to Montjuïc, however, he has not yet decided where his other chances may come.

“I haven’t looked through the entire road book yet,” he said. “I prefer to take it day by day.”

That does not mean the ambition has gone. Van der Poel still wants to win stages and would gladly wear yellow again. But there is no sense of unfinished business.

His victory on the Mûr de Bretagne in 2021, with all that it meant for his family, remains the Tour moment against which everything else is measured.

“It will remain the highlight,” he said. “For me, it does not get any better than that.”