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Jonas Rickaert worked so hard in his audacious long-range Tour de France breakaway with Mathieu van der Poel that he puked five times.
Perhaps that’s not surprising given the burly Belgian pushed 400 watts for three-and-a-half hours in a ridiculous attack that began “as a joke” but earned him a career-topping trip to the combativity podium of the Tour de France.
“I think I’ll go home tomorrow. My Tour is done,” Rickaert laughed at the finish of his afternoon off the front.
“I always wanted to be on the Tour podium, so I made a joke of it that we’d go with two from the start. But it seems Mathieu was serious, so we just continued,” Rickaert said. “I was slowly dying.”
Rickaert and Van der Poel’s long-bomb Sunday was one for the books.
MVDP came within 700 meters of one of the most memorable grand wins in recent memory and lured the peloton to the second fastest Tour de France stage in history.
At 50.01kph, the average from stage 9 on Sunday was only a half-watt behind the 50.4kph record set when Mario Cippolini bulldozed into Blois in 1999.
400 watts for 168km: ‘My stomach couldn’t handle the effort. I vomited five times’
Sadly, Van der Poel rarely uploads to Strava.
But to the delight of data nerds worldwide, Rickaert shared his Strava file Sunday, power numbers and all.
Van der Poel and Rickaert shackled up to form the Alpecin-Deceuninck Express when the flag dropped in Chinon. Rickaert pulled with the Dutch “Duracell Bunny” all afternoon before his legs blew 6km from the finish in Châteauroux.
Rickaert’s 168km escape required a 400-watt normalized power for close to three and a half hours. It called for more than 4,500 calories of stomach-churning effort.
For ~85kg Rickaert, 400 watts works out at around 4.7w/kg.
Doesn’t sound like much?
Remember he spent half that time sitting in Van der Poel’s wheel while they motored through the breadbasket of France.
Rickaert’s pulls on the front were likely far north of 450w, each time. Check those saw-tooth shapes of his power and heart rate graphs above – it was an all-afternoon threshold session.
“My stomach couldn’t handle the effort. I vomited five times,” Rickaert told the Sporza “Vive le Vélo” show Sunday afternoon.
“My clothes looked terrible after the finish. But it was worth it.”
An epic ride from MVDP and Rickaert
The Alpecin-Deceuninck teammates took on the peloton on Stage 9 of the Tour de France with Mathieu Van der Poel eventually caught just 800m away from the line.
Sprint Cycling
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#TDF2025 pic.twitter.com/eYqh9Viidf— Velon CC (@VelonCC) July 13, 2025
Van der Poel is significantly lighter than Rickaert so his absolute power numbers would have been correspondingly lower than his journeyman wingman.
But you can be sure the monument champion burned every match he had – that’s what MVDP does, after all.
“I discussed with Jonas that we wanted to go for it today. His dream is to be on the Tour de France podium, so I was happy to help him get combativity,” a crosseyed-looking Van der Poel said at the line.
“We came really close, but I think we were both just on the limit. It was a very hard day,” Van der Poel told a media scrum in Châteauroux. “I think we put on a good show today.”
Van der Poel and Rickaert might not want to see the “recovery scores” calculated by their Whoop straps Monday morning.
The numbers will only get steeper in the next two weeks
The crazy numbers from Rickaert’s ride lift the lid on the unprecedented performance required to resist the super-dialled, hyper-fueled Tour de France peloton.
Ben Healy’s Strava account shows similar stupidity. He pushed 330w for close to an hour when he made his 42km winning attack on stage 6 – all after 160km of relentlessly hilly racing.
Expect to see the power numbers go off the charts in the next two weeks of this Tour de France.
The hors categorie efforts of the Pyrénées and Alps are coming.
