"I haven’t heard anything concrete yet" - No sign of Mathieu van der Poel's cyclocross season starting any soon

Wout van Aert will likely wait until late December to start his cyclocross season, as he will prioritize the team training camp in eastern Spain. There's no signs on when or if Tom Pidcock will race, and the same applies to Mathieu van der Poel who was the topic of a conversation with the Dutch national team coach.

“I haven’t heard anything concrete yet, let’s put it that way. And if he lets you know something, you never know for sure. Let’s see first," Gerben de Knegt told Wielerflits. “He does have cyclocross plans, but the question is whether it fits".

Last year the World Champion waited until Herentals, on the 16th of December, to start his winter's stint of racing. It proved to be a successful strategy as he entered the racing block with great form and showed it all throughout - winning all but one races, but taking the main goal in the World Championships. Most likely, the Alpecin-Deceuninck rider will again wait for December to kick off his campaign, after ending his season with a win at the Gravel World Championships.

“I’ll just wait and see. I understand his idea of ​​skipping a cyclocross winter. Knowing him, he would rather not do two or three cyclocross races and then do the World Championships," de Knegt argued. "If he goes cyclocross, he wants to do more. Then it gets busy again and that puts pressure on your road preparation. He will have to make that decision.”