"I wanted to hold Mathieu back a bit at the beginning" - Michael Vanthourenhout tried in vain to slow up Van der Poel at CX World Championships
Cyclocross
Two-time European champion Michael Vanthourenhout wasn't able to make the Cyclocross World Championships podium for the third time in his career in 2025. The Belgian eventually finished in 7th, but early on in the race, tried his best to help team leader Wout van Aert by doing what he could to slow down Mathieu van der Poel.
Van Aert, having started on the 4th row, needed to work his way through the field to get to race-winning contention. Hoping to buy his compatriot some time to do this task, Vanthourenhout attempted (in vain) to delay inevitable Van der Poel acceleration. "I wanted to hold Mathieu back a bit at the beginning, but you could see that he really wanted to be in the lead and push hard," he explains post-race in quotes collected by Sporza. "You can't stop that. He was already gone on the first bridge. Nothing you can do about it."
Speaking on his own performance, Vanthourenhout has a good explanation for his somewhat lesser level on Sunday afternoon. "It was a very tough and very technical cross," he notes. "I knew since Thursday that it wouldn't be 100%. I got a little sick and on this course you have to be 100%."
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| 01 | van der Poel Mathieu | - | 01:02:44 |
| 02 | van Aert Wout | - | + 45 |
| 03 | Nys Thibau | - | + 01:06 |
| 04 | Nieuwenhuis Joris | - | + 01:15 |
| 05 | Verstrynge Emiel | - | + 01:53 |
| 06 | Aerts Toon | - | + 01:56 |
| 07 | Vanthourenhout Michael | - | + 02:00 |
| 08 | Wyseure Joran | - | + 02:03 |
| 09 | van der Haar Lars | - | + 02:09 |
| 10 | Sweeck Laurens | - | + 02:28 |
| 11 | Kamp Ryan | - | + 02:44 |
| 12 | Orts Lloret Felipe | - | + 02:45 |
| 13 | Iserbyt Eli | - | + 03:32 |
| 14 | Vandeputte Niels | - | + 03:40 |
| 15 | Doubey Fabien | - | + 03:47 |
| 16 | Kuhn Kevin | - | + 04:10 |
| 17 | Venturini Clément | - | + 04:22 |
| 18 | Mein Thomas | - | + 04:49 |
| 19 | Funston Scott | - | + 05:00 |
| 20 | Hendrikx Mees | - | + 05:15 |
| 21 | Ronhaar Pim | - | + 05:31 |
| 22 | Bertolini Gioele | - | + 05:35 |
| 23 | Menut David | - | + 05:54 |
| 24 | Boros Michael | - | + 06:08 |
HISTORY MAKER! 🔥🌈
— Eurosport (@eurosport) February 2, 2025
Mathieu van der Poel equals Erik De Vlaeminck's record of SEVEN Cyclo-cross World titles! It's also the Dutchman's third in a row 📷👏 pic.twitter.com/geUjNhSi5k
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- 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