Death, taxes & Van der Poel solos! Another epic display hands world champion dominant World Cup Gavere win
Cyclocross
They say there are no certainties in sport, but Mathieu van der Poel winning cyclocross races is seemingly as close to certain as things can get. Continuing his faultless start to the winter, the world champion has soloed to Boxing Day success in Gavere.
As is often the case when Mathieu van der Poel takes to the cross, the early exchanges of the fight were dominated by a sense of looming doom as the likes of Thibau Nys, Michael Vanthourenhout and Pim Ronhaar battled the for the front on lap 1, as the world champion bided his time in fourth at the end of the opening lap.
Although Ronhaar dropped away on lap 2, the trio of Nys, Vanthourenhout and Van der Poel continued to look relatively evenly matched. Early on lap 3 though, Van der Poel made his big move, attacking clear of his two companions and steadily building up an advantage of 26 seconds by the end of the third lap.
As the world champion just extended his advantage from there, riding further and further clear through the mid-race laps towards another dominant victory, the fight for second was really heating up between Nys and Vanthourenhout, pith the likes of Lars van der Haar not completely giving up hope of a podium finish either.
Even Van der Poel himself wasn't completely without error, coming down a couple of times at one certain section of the course. Given he had over 40 seconds advantage though, the Alpecin-Deceuninck superstar had given himself plenty of a buffer to allow for such small errors. In the battle for second meanwhile, Vanthourenhout was breaking free as Van der Haar passed teammate Nys to take third on the course.
As Van der Poel took the bell for the final lap, the difference between himself and Vanthourenhout was 32 seconds. In the end, that proved more than enough as Van der Poel took victory ahead of Vanthourenhout and Nys, who surged back past Van der Haar on a brilliant final lap.
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- i don’t know nearly as much about bruyneel or hincapie as most of us do about lance, but we judge people by the company they keep. i hand no idea what psychological problems the other two have, but there’s gotta be something pretty severely wrong with them if they continue to choose to be close to armstrong.OCexile26-12-2024
- Ayuso and Rodriguez are only 22 and 23. Don't pressure it as they're still so sooo young.
James2631826-12-2024 - Not sure that can be true, in that USA Cycling is part of the UCI.acem8226-12-2024
- Oh, and yes: I am no psychiatrist/psychologist, but Bruyneel and Texas Turd are both sociopaths. It goes well beyond "protect my world and anyone would" that is the usual zeitgeist of their bullshit. No normal person has Bob Roll go at Greg Lemond with an audio recording device at Ron Keifel's bike shop...for example.EricJensenRidesBikes26-12-2024
- Funnier: this website keeps giving credo to their ramblings. In this case, why in any possible way would Boonen want to create a fantasy world to attach himself to these two clowns when more likely he would want to forget he was even there? Laughable.EricJensenRidesBikes26-12-2024
- A sociopath is an informal term used to describe someone with antisocial personality disorder (ASPD), a mental health condition characterized by a chronic pattern of disregard for social norms, laws, and the rights and feelings of others.EricJensenRidesBikes26-12-2024
- Rowe spent his whole career on one team being nothing more than a thug for Skyneos. I have no idea why another team would want import this type of person into their program.Sweep26-12-2024
- “CyclingUpToDate would like to extend it's condolences to family and friends of Pascal.” Paging a copy editor….menk26-12-2024
- yeah, that’s a more fair assessment. “reaching mathieu’s level” doesn’t mean you’re planning to replicate his whole career. the former IS doable, potentially. it’s just the latter that likely is not.OCexile25-12-2024
- That’s not entirely true. Every person follows their own development path and peaks differently. Remco and Primoz had hardly started cycling before elite level. Jonas was pretty much under the radzr until he unexpectedly had to take over responsibility at JV. Some guys only get real good in their thirties others have peaked mid-twenties. You can’t tell in advance how and upto what level they will progress, obviously his career might not have MVDPs length but nothing says he could not end up doing a few seasons at his level.Mistermaumau25-12-2024