The road cyclists are slowly waking up from their winter hibernation but have been able to recharge over the past weeks. The off-season is a period to fully unwind. Taking a holiday, seeing friends, and enjoying good food take priority for a while. Over the past weeks, social media has been filled with cyclists celebrating the off-season. What have they all been up to?
We have received (almost) daily updates in recent weeks from a number of cycling stars about their off-season activities. Take big names like Mathieu van der Poel, Wout van Aert, and Tom Pidcock.
Van der Poel experienced the Ryder Cup up close
Van der Poel was in the United States at the end of September and beginning of October, where he celebrated what he called an “active vacation”. Business meetings were scheduled with his sponsors Canyon and Zwift, who have their headquarters in California, but there was also time for relaxation and even a round of golf with a challenge against swimming legend Michael Phelps.
As a golf fan, Van der Poel witnessed the thrilling climax of the Ryder Cup from the front row, but he also showed up unannounced at a group ride of nearly forty kilometers in Los Angeles. Invited by Canyon and Zwift, Van der Poel participated in a community event, where about a hundred cycling enthusiasts from the region gather weekly to go for a ride. The ride had to remain strictly secret to maximize the surprise for the local cycling club.
La dolce vita for Van Aert, Pidcock is now a man
While Van der Poel stayed across the pond, his eternal rival Wout van Aert immersed himself in the land of pizzas, wine, romance, and the Pope: Italy. On Instagram, he shared plenty of snapshots from his cultural tour through the capital city Rome. Together with his wife Sarah De Bie and the children, he visited the Palatine Hill—the earliest inhabited hill in Rome—and many other cultural highlights in the city of love (how fitting!).
Tom Pidcock and his girlfriend Bethany Louise Zajac also had a wonderful time, but in a more exotic and secluded place: the Seychelles, a country and archipelago in Africa north of Madagascar. This turned out to be the perfect spot for Pidcock to propose to his girlfriend. Or as the British all-rounder put it on his Instagram page: "I went there as a boy, but came back a man." After this very romantic holiday, Pidcock flew on to South Africa to participate in a mountain bike race.
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Arensman on an adventure, no rest yet for Evenepoel
And what else? Thymen Arensman also spent many hours on planes for his holiday in Mauritius, while brothers Mick and Tim van Dijke were spotted in Curaçao. To recharge after an exhausting cycling season, but the Zeeland twins also took part in a mountain bike race there. Italian rider Kevin Colleoni (until this year with Intermarché-Wanty) shared some special snapshots from his trip to Zanzibar.
But not everyone had the opportunity to immediately take it easy. Take Remco Evenepoel for example: the Belgian has had several busy weeks. "I haven’t really had much off-season, to be honest," he told VTM News earlier this month. The transfer to Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe was quite complex. "I had a lot of obligations. I had to go to America and several times to Salzburg. It only really became off-season a few days ago, and from now on it's two, three weeks of vacation and proper rest."
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Whether Tadej Pogacar has been on holiday is unknown, but the Slovenian certainly hasn’t just been lounging on the sofa in recent weeks. After his victory in the Tour of Lombardy, the world champion participated in a unique cycling event with only four participants (Jonas Vingegaard, Primoz Roglic, and Isaac Del Toro also took part) in Andorra. Afterwards, he attended his first training camp in Dubai with his UAE Emirates XRG teammates, preparing for the new racing season.
It is unclear whether the Slovenian traveled to another faraway destination after the training camp (last year he enjoyed the sunshine in the Seychelles), but what we do know is that Pogacar is now back in full training for 2026. "Time to get back to work," he posted on Instagram last week.
Screenshot: Instagram Mathieu van der Poel
