"If we leave, not much will change" - Namur World Cup organiser considers leaving the classification

The cyclo-cross event of the weekend took place on Saturday in Herentals during the round of the X20 trophy: the return to the fields of the five-time world champion in the discipline, Mathieu Van der Poel. Without him and without the other star of the discipline, Wout van Aert, the World Cup in Namur scheduled for the next day could fear the hangover effect. And yet, the public took advantage of the winter sun to come en masse to the Citadel site.

"If I don't count last year's European Championships which took place over three days, this edition is the most successful in terms of the public," the organizer Christophe Impens shares at DirectVelo. "This year, we had 9,100 people on the site. This is better than the previous record of 8,300 in 2021. Every winter, we reach a new milestone." During the first edition, 15 years ago, Niels Albert won in front of… 1200 spectators.

The director of Golazo, which organizes the Namur cyclo-cross, knows the strength of his product. "Here, people come for the place. I live near the Koppenberg, but I am not afraid to say that it is in Namur that the most beautiful course is traced. And like at the Koppenberg, we see that even without Mathieu Van der Poel and Wout van Aert, the spectators are there. We organize a large number of races and Namur is one of those which attract the most people."

The future of Namur cyclocross might be outside the World Cup tho. "We entered this competition in 2011, and today, I ask myself a lot of questions about the need to stay there," explains Christophe Impens. "If we leave, we will always have the same audience, the same infrastructures, and we will certainly have the means to invite Mathieu Van der Poel as we did at Herentals. The big stars no longer follow the logic of regularity rankings."