“I touched the sky with a finger, he is an absolute god to me”: Two full-time workers live the World Cup dream alongside Van der Poel
“I touched the sky with a finger, he is an absolute god to me.” The words tumble out with a laugh, half disbelief, half joy. For two full-time workers who spend their weekdays far from the glare of television cameras, sharing a World Cup start line with Mathieu van der Poel feels less like sport and more like a waking dream.
On Sunday mornings, while most fans watch highlights on a phone or television, these riders pin on numbers, squeeze into the call-up grid and wait just a few meters from one of cycling’s most dominant figures. Van der Poel rolls past, calm and coiled, and suddenly the gap between legend and ordinary life disappears. For a brief hour, they inhabit the same race, the same mud, the same chaos.
Both men juggle demanding jobs with elite-level training. Alarm clocks ring before dawn, not for recovery rides or massages, but for commutes, meetings and deadlines. Training happens in the margins of the day: early mornings, lunch breaks, headlights cutting through the dark on winter roads. Recovery is whatever fits around family dinners and sleep stolen from busy schedules. Racing a World Cup is not the result of a perfectly optimized program; it’s the reward for stubborn passion.
That’s what makes lining up next to Van der Poel so surreal. He is the benchmark, the rider everyone measures themselves against, even when the comparison is hopeless. One of them admits he tried not to look too much, afraid the moment would overwhelm him. The other couldn’t help it. “When he accelerated,” he says, “it felt like the ground moved. I told myself: just follow for five seconds.” Five seconds turned into two, then one, then none. And still, the memory lingers like a badge of honor.
In the race, reality asserts itself quickly. Van der Poel floats across sections that demand full concentration from everyone else. Lines appear where others see only ruts. Gaps open effortlessly. Yet there is no bitterness in being dropped. Instead, there’s a strange comfort. Losing time to a rider of that caliber feels almost reassuring, proof that the hierarchy of the sport still makes sense.
After the finish, exhaustion blends with pride. They scroll through results, spotting their names far below the podium, but firmly inside the World Cup classification. Messages buzz from friends and colleagues who watched at home. Co-workers who barely understand cyclocross suddenly ask what it was like to race “that superstar.”
What lingers most isn’t the result, but the proximity. A shared warm-up area. A nod on the start line. The realization that idols are human, even if their abilities seem otherworldly. “For a moment,” one of them says, “I wasn’t just watching history. I was part of it.”
On Monday morning, it’s back to work. Laptops open, coffee cups refill. Muddy bikes wait to be cleaned. But something has shifted. The World Cup dream didn’t end with the finish line. It followed them home, a quiet reminder that with enough love for the sport, even the most ordinary lives can brush against greatness — just enough to feel like touching the sky with a finger.
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