Death, taxes & Van der Poel solos! Another epic display hands world champion dominant World Cup Gavere win

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.