Mathieu van der Poel

His father Adri won the Tour of Flanders in 1986 and a cyclo-cross world title ten years after that. His maternal grandfather Raymond Poulidor stood on the Tour de France podium eight times without ever wearing the yellow jersey. Van der Poel took the junior cyclo-cross world title in 2012 and again in 2013, the first rider to defend it, and the junior road race title in Florence that same year.

He signed for the Roodhooft brothers' team in 2014 and has stayed there through every change of sponsor. Wout van Aert took the elite cyclo-cross world title three winters running from 2016; Van der Poel won four of the next five, then won again at Tábor in 2024 and Liévin in 2025.

He won Amstel Gold Race in 2019, closing down a two-man move inside the final kilometres. The Tour of Flanders came in 2020, 2022 and 2024, Milan-San Remo in 2023 and 2025, and Paris-Roubaix three years running from 2023, which made him the third rider to win three in succession. He crashed late in Glasgow in 2023 and still finished alone for the world road title.

Stage two of the 2021 Tour de France at Mûr-de-Bretagne gave him the yellow jersey Poulidor never had. He held it until the first mountain stage, then did not start stage nine, having built the year around the Tokyo Olympic mountain bike race, where he crashed on the opening lap. The 2022 Giro d'Italia opened with a stage win and the pink jersey. He has never ridden a grand tour for the general classification.

Tadej Pogačar rode away from him on the final Oude Kwaremont at the 2025 Tour of Flanders, then finished behind him at Milan-San Remo and Paris-Roubaix. Van der Poel won stage two of that year's Tour into Boulogne-sur-Mer and led the race again, before a pneumonia diagnosis on the rest day ended his Tour ahead of stage 16.

He skipped the opening rounds of the 2025-26 cyclo-cross World Cup, joining it at Namur in mid-December. Dendermonde on 28 December was the only round he started and did not win, Thibau Nys taking that one, and Van der Poel won the overall World Cup ahead of him. At Hulst on 1 February 2026 he won the world title by half a minute from Tibor del Grosso, going past the record Erik De Vlaeminck set in 1973.