• The Cycling News forum is still looking to add volunteer moderators with. If you're interested in helping keep our discussions on track, send a direct message to @SHaines here on the forum, or use the Contact Us form to message the Community Team.

    In the meanwhile, please use the Report option if you see a post that doesn't fit within the forum rules.

    Thanks!

Teams & Riders The "MVP" Mathieu Van der Poel Road Discussion Thread

Page 167 - Get up to date with the latest news, scores & standings from the Cycling News Community.
MvdP was dumb, exasserbated as he surely was on the eve of a mega appointment. He should have handled the situation differently, but decrying mistreatment of those poor creatures is ridiculous. They had it coming and then some. Why is that we, and in this case the mother, put "innocent" rascals on a pedestal? In my day, my father would have gotten to the bottom of it. If I had behaved as those girls, I would have had my ears boxed, other than call the police. And if I hadn't, my father would have beaten the *** out of the guy.
 
Last edited:
I feel you are constantly bringing a sexual note into this which is absolutely not there. There were teenagers acting like 8year olds, a grown-up man defending himself in a very immature way. Men often don't feel as uncomfortable about being "naked" as women do, especially athletes who are used to be seen half-naked. (For instance I would probably get off the bike if my butt was pretty much totally blank and I was sitting on a race bike in front of cameras, but many cyclists who have crashed don't.)

I am not a van der Poel-fan, and he really didn't show a great side of his here, but the outrage about this is just... too much for me. He should have seriously excused himself right there, the girls should have excused themselves, how things like this get so big and official, I don't really know.
Yes I know that's how athletes sees it. But most people outside sports won't see it that way, I am pretty sure the police didn't, nor does media.
I think like a journalist, I know what they look for, I know how to do PR work, when to poodle etc and that's where I come from in this.

It's not a good look for a sponsor to have your name associated with having assaulted teenage girls, and it looks more scandalous doing it in underwear.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Bolder
You care about the righteous solution. But For MVDP in that situation, it’s the expedient and pragmatic that was most needed. What was the real problem here for VDP: it was losing sleep& getting frustrated. The quickest solution is to remove oneself from the problem situation—whether it was kids harassing, bedbugs, crank calls, whatever. The longer he stayed active in that situation, EVEN if he wasn’t ever arrested, the more sleep he would lose and the more his mind would be on something other than winning the WC.

what was the biggest thing he stood to lose when this started? His shot at the rainbow jersey.

I agree with your statement here.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Sciatic
You care about the righteous solution. But For MVDP in that situation, it’s the expedient and pragmatic that was most needed. What was the real problem here for VDP: it was losing sleep& getting frustrated. The quickest solution is to remove oneself from the problem situation—whether it was kids harassing, bedbugs, crank calls, whatever. The longer he stayed active in that situation, EVEN if he wasn’t ever arrested, the more sleep he would lose and the more his mind would be on something other than winning the WC.

what was the biggest thing he stood to lose when this started? His shot at the rainbow jersey.
The wise and stoic Marcus Aurelius once wrote that the consequences of anger are far worse than the anger itself (thus let it go).

PS. The actual quote is: "How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it."
 
Last edited:
I see that a lot of people really want back to the time it was ok to beat children. I suggest for example living in China. There you can even beat grownup children on TV.

What about Tiktok? What about the pressure teenagers put on each other to get likes to do ididotic things? To even live for likes but unknown people to get by your day? What about laws against publishing strangers on the internet?

I've never once defended the kids, nor the parents. They shouldn't be allowed in hotels.

But also; you moved to that particular floor as you thought you'd sleep better with your girlfriend than Jan Maas. How could you assume that when there was a family next to your hotel room and you went to sleep 8:40 a Saturday night at a hotel near the airport? How easy have you lived your life if you don't expect noice at a hotel?
If you have problems with sleeping bring earplugs.

How loud does a knock and run sounds if you're on a hotel with good isolation? Or if you have earplugs, which you should if you intend to go to sleep early in the evening a Saturday night.

There's just so much naivete in this story and it's not just from the children. MVDP acted like a child himself.
 
At least he won a stage, and wore yellow last year, so it's not completely out there...
But I can just imagine the conversation:

"Hmmm... multiple times CX World Champion. Two times Flanders winner. Bunch of other wins."
"No. Nobody is gonna know what that means. Look, he has done the Tour de France; he's a Tour de France cyclist!"
What do they do for Evenepoel? Vuelta a Espana cyclist wins world championship....Liege-Bastogne-Liege cyclist wins world championship?