Mathieu van der Poel’s Assault Charges Dropped by Australian Judge
Mathieu van der Poel must be feeling a lot of relief today, as The Guardian reports that the assault charges against him in Australia have been dropped, and his conviction of common assault has been overturned.
A judge ruled that the former World Champion had a ‘significant degree of provocation’ that caused him to fly off the handle after being plagued by a teenage game of ding-dong-ditch in his hotel at Worlds.
In case you missed it, van der Poel was arrested in Wollongong, Australia the night before World Championships after an incident in his hotel between him and two young teens who were repeatedly knocking on his door and running away.
Eventually, van der Poel runs from his room to confront the girls. Court documents and video footage showed a man in his underwear chasing them down the hall. Van der Poel did admit to grabbing one of the girls’ arms and yelling at them, though court documents suggest that he also knocked one down and pushed one into a wall. Recordings revealed a back-and-forth with the mother, who was in the room next to the girls’. She tells him she’s calling the police, and he tells her that she should.
Eventually, police showed up and arrested the cyclist, who was released early the next morning with only a few hours ahead of the World Championships race, which he started but didn’t finish.
He was allowed to leave Australia that Tuesday after pleading guilty to common assault, though his lawyer said they planned to appeal his conviction. Van der Poel was fined $1500 AUS for the assault charges against the two girls, and was also not allowed to return to Australia for three years.
At the time, he was not given an allowance for the fact that this incident happened just ahead of UCI World Championships, which his lawyer Michael Bowe argued should have been considered a mitigating circumstance.
But another judge ruled in van der Poel’s favor: According to The Guardian, Judge Ian Bourke SC said van der Poel’s reaction had been in “response to annoying and invasive conduct” by the girls. Their knocks on his door constituted a “significant degree of provocation.”
Bowe told the press that he was pleased with the outcome. "He’s a dedicated sportsman and cyclist,” Bowe told reporters. “It’s really important these matters were dismissed."
His main argument? That van der Poel lost his chance to win Worlds. “I ran the argument on the basis of loss to Mathieu—he had one opportunity in his life to win the world championships and he’d lost that opportunity,” he told reporters. “He’d trained for that opportunity. He’d let his country down, he’d let his team down.” Admittedly, we're not sure that was his only opportunity to ever win Worlds again. But that might be a hard one for the prosecution to prove.
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