Glory for Lucinda Brand and Niels Vandeputte! Superprestige season comes to a close at Noordzeecross Middelkerke
Cyclocross
Today marks the end of the Superprestige season at the Noordzeecross Middelkerke. A week on from the World Championships in France, and it was Inge van der Heijden and Joris Nieuwenhuis who won the elite women's and elite men's races on the day, whilst Lucinda Brand and Niels Vandeputte secured the overall victories.
In the first lap of the men's race, there was a touch of controversy as Michael Vanthourenhout appeared to give Kevin Kuhn a push.
But in the absence of Mathieu van der Poel and Wout van Aert, it was Nieuwenhuis, Eli Iserbyt and Vanthourenhout who appeared to be the strongest on the day. In the end, Nieuwenhuis was able to power ahead of Iserbyt, as the overall winner, Vandeputte, secured the final spot on the podium.
Inge van der Heijden secured the most significant victory of her cyclocross career in the women's elite race, after 25 podium places she finally got her first win. Van der Heijden managed to fend off Lucinda Brand, who nearly staged a remarkable comeback after a crash at the first corner but ultimately had to settle for second place.
Despite finishing as the runner-up, Brand's performance was enough to secure her third career victory in the overall classification of the Telenet Superprestige cyclocross series. During the final round in Middelkerke, her lead in the standings was never in jeopardy, as her main rival, Ceylin del Carmen Alvarado, was not on the start line. Brand will be especially happy to have won this title, after missing out on the world title to Fem van Empel last weekend.
Although she finished behind an impressive Inge van der Heijden in Middelkerke, Lucinda Brand still crossed the finish line as the victor overall, and this marked the former world champion’s first Superprestige title since 2022. Thanks to Brand and Alvarado, a Dutch woman has now won the title for the past six straight seasons.
Results powered by FirstCycling.com
Just in
Popular news
Latest comments
- In Track and Field, there's Usain Bolt in the sprints and Kenya's Kipchoge in the marathon. Though Bolt can quite easily beat Kipchoge in the 100m dash, he probably won't even finish a marathon. Tadej won't beat Mathieu in a sprint, yet he wins the TDF while MVDP languishes in 50th place. Both are great champions in their respective fields, but my admiration goes to Tadej for trying.FredMan23-03-2025
- They went into the race as co-leaders!frieders323-03-2025
- He can win that sprint if he plays it right but leaving tha gap was ridiculous ! A spring after 6+ hours isn't a guarantee for MVDPfrieders323-03-2025
- The climbs are steeper on Flanders giving Pogi the advanatge as we saw before when he won!frieders323-03-2025
- VDP is best in a short sprint, so Pog was purposely leaving a gap in hopes that VDP wouldn't have enough to sprint for 310 meters at the end of 300 KM. Kwiatkowski did the same thing to Sagan at that same point and won because of it.acem8223-03-2025
- Ganna started winning the occasional end of season sprint a few years ago. It's been fun watching him change from a TT specialist into something more.RidesHills23-03-2025
- hey look, an insinuating question from 2 years ago! I mean, sure, announcers mentioned tail wind, but whatever. That wasn't going to matter today, not with the 2 best classics riders of the past many generations (you have to go back to the 70s to see two people dominate like this, and even Merckx and de Vlaeminck never managed to win 2 each in the same year, the way Pogacar and Van der Poel have done in the past 2 years).RidesHills23-03-2025
- I like my statistics: Pogacar and van der Poel have won 13 of the last 18 Monuments and are tied at 7 each (MvdP won his first long enough ago that it doesn't show the more recent utter domination.) Oh, and the last 2 road world championships. Oh, and one of them also won the last Tour and Giro, while the other won the CX and Gravel world championships. I mean, anyone reading this site knows all this, but it's worth being amazed by it all every now and then.RidesHills23-03-2025
- Congratulations to all three on the podium. The final seconds reminded me of E3 a few years back, when tiny little Pogacar had no chance against van Aert and van der Poel, but that was just the last few seconds of an incredible race. Everything from the launch on the Cipressa to crossing the line was amazing.RidesHills23-03-2025
- All 3 of them went to doping control
Front24223-03-2025