Mathieu van der Pol intends to keep a busy schedule after a failed attempt to debut the Tour de France, combining road racing with mountain biking and cyclo-cross once competition resumes in late summer and fall.

The Dutch rider had planned his 2020 campaign around a mountain bike cross-country race at the Tokyo Olympics, but that was scrapped when the event was postponed for a year due to the COVID-19 epidemic.

His Alpecin Phoenix team lobbied organizer ASO to invite additional teams to the rescheduled Tour de France, but other officials opposed the idea, and race director Christian Prudhomme said this week that the starting lineup would not exceed the original 22 teams.

Van der Pol was therefore forced to postpone his Grand Tour debut until 2021 or 2022.

"Of course I wanted to ride the Tour de France, but I knew that the chances of starting were very low, so I didn't set my sights on that either," van der Pol told the Belgian newspaper Het Nieuwsblad (opens in new tab).

"We had already received signals in that direction. So it's not a big disappointment. I would have liked to be in the Tour. But that's the risk of not being part of a WorldTour team. It's a shame because it could have been a perfect race in this quiet year.

Van der Pol's road racing campaign will revolve around the "spring" classics, which take place in late summer and fall. The first race will be the Strade Bianche on August 1, followed a week later by the Milan-San Remo.

September brings the World Road Championships, the Grand Prix Cycliste Monreal and a trip to Canada in Quebec, followed by the Cobblestone and Ardennes Classics in October; there may even be a Liege-Bastogne-Liege debut on October 4.

"I don't think it would be possible for me to finish in the top two places in Amstel and Ghent-Wevelgem in the same weekend. I chose the Amstel Gold Race partly because Wevelgem was not on the schedule this year," van der Pol told Nieuwsblad.

"I still don't know if I will be in Liège or not. In principle, that race is a little too difficult for me. But if my schedule is only 30 races, so to speak, and the team wants me to do it, I would certainly be eager for it."

The Doire de Flenderen, Tour de Flanders, and Paris-Roubaix will take place in late October. Van der Pol then hopes to compete in the Mountain Bike World Championships once they are rescheduled after the event scheduled for Albstadt was cancelled, and will wear the rainbow jersey in the December cyclo-cross, missing the early races on the cyclo-cross calendar would be.

"If all goes well, I'll still be busy enough. I sincerely hope this is a fixed calendar, but I don't dare to say it out loud yet," van der Pol said.

"On the other hand, it's almost two months until Strade Bianche. That should be my first race. If I don't have a little bit of normality by then, that would be very bad."