2015 World Cyclocross Champion Mathieu van der Poel will be looking to reclaim the title from Wout van Aert at the 2017 championships in Luxembourg on Sunday. We photographed his Stevens bike with its bespoke paintwork at the Zilvermeercross in Mol at the beginning of December 2016.
Van der Poel is on a Shimano Dura-Ace Di2 groupset
With Shimano a sponsor of van der Poel’s Beobank-Coredon team, he is running a Dura-Ace Di2 R9000 groupset. On a relatively flat course at Mol, there’s a 46/39 chainset coupled to a close ratio 11-25 cassette. Shimano doesn’t yet offer a 46/36 in its newer R9150 groupset, so van der Poel is using the older R9000.
Rear mech wire is routed through the bottom of the seatstay, reducing the risk of disconnection in a race.
Seatpost and Turnix saddle come from Shimano’s Pro brand, while there’s a Pro Stealth Evo single piece bar-stem. The bike’s BMW roundels on the fork crown and rev counter decal on the top tube reference that company’s M series high-performance cars – and van der Poel’s first name. His other bikes are a more standard black and white.
Van der Poel’s Shimano pedals are marked prototype. We’ve seen similar pedals on Sven Nys’s bike last year.
Like the majority of pro riders, van der Poel is running hydraulic disc brakes this season, using 14cm rotors front and rear at Mol. The rest of his components also come from Shimano, with his wheels shod with the cyclocross racer’s favourite Dugast tubular tyres – in this case a file tread for the sandy course.
“Since I’ve been riding a bike, disc brakes is the best innovation together with the Shimano Di2 electronic shifting. It shifts really fast and, in cyclocross, you often have frozen hands and haven’t got the power to shift, but with Di2 you just have to push a little bit and it shifts, even when you have to shift from the small to the big chainring.
Mathieu Van der Poel won the 2016 Superprestige Gavere cyclocross race in November
(Image credit: Watson)
“Style motivates me as well. I’m always thinking about style because I believe it’s really an important part of cycling. The team is always motivating me by doing such things. They know it can trigger me to dig deeper in the race.”
Photos: Jack Chevell/Watson
Thank you for reading 20 articles this month* Join now for unlimited access
Paul started writing for Cycling Weekly in 2015, covering cycling tech, new bikes and product testing. Since then, he’s reviewed hundreds of bikes and thousands of other pieces of cycling equipment for the magazine and the Cycling Weekly website.
He’s been cycling for a lot longer than that though and his travels by bike have taken him all around Europe and to California. He’s been riding gravel since before gravel bikes existed too, riding a cyclocross bike through the Chilterns and along the South Downs.
'It's a surreal experience' - Meet the British teenager racing with his heroes
A closer look at the 'disruptive' Ribble Rebellion crit bike: part artwork, part race machine
