"I consciously did not try to follow Mathieu van der Poel" - Wout van Aert aware of his limits after 3rd place in Koksijde

Wout van Aert's winter cyclocross campaign continued to stutter along on Thursday afternoon in Koksijde as the Belgian battled hard to come home third at the X2O Trofee race.

Unsurprisingly, the race was won by the dominant force of cyclocross this winter and van Aert's nemesis, Mathieu van der Poel. Aware he's not competing at his best level however, the Belgian deliberately chose not to try and match his rival. “No, I consciously did not try to follow him,” van Aert admitted in his post-race interview.

“At the start, I came off my pedal, so I did a serious sprint to get away well,” Van Aert expands further. “That might have been a bit too much. I started the first sandy strip with a very high heart rate. Mathieu then did the same as in the other crosses. I chose my own pace, and that wasn't very fast.”

Van Aert did clearly still have something left in the tank however, as in the finale he powered clear from Lars van der Haar in the battle for third an nearly even caught up with second-placed Pim Ronhaar. “I have had better legs in cyclocross races in the past, so sometimes I had to adapt to that feeling,” Van Aert analyzed. “But I still enjoyed it. I took a nice victory in Zolder and at the other races there were also a lot of people along the side of the road. It was a pleasure to see my fans again.”