"I don't have the shape to ride the entire cross full throttle" - Wout van Aert rides tactically to second at Antwerp World Cup

For the second day running, Wout van Aert had to settle for a second-placed finish behind Mathieu van der Poel at the latest round of UCI World Cup action in Antwerp on Saturday afternoon.

"I felt quite good actually. I was in a good position at the beginning," van Aert recalls in his post-race interview. For this race, the Belgian actually took a different tactic. “I think I rode this race a bit more conservatively. I tried to drive between the wheels. That was the right tactic. Why did I choose that? Because I don't have the shape to ride the entire cross full throttle. Now I was able to accelerate in the last two laps with Eli Iserbyt.”

With the likes of van der Poel and Tom Pidcock having bad starts, van Aert was able to get underway well. “I was rather happy with the position I had and tried to hold on to it. It went quite quickly in the first lap. I thought it was impressive how quickly Mathieu came along. After that we also saw that he was the better one," van Aert admits. "I'm glad I didn't get burned by that today and chose to ride my own course.”

Although van der Poel was far out of sight once he attacked, van Aert did well to keep close to the front and out-kicked Iserbyt on the last lap to take second place. "Today I felt a lot better than yesterday and I'm happy with how it ended," he concludes.