"It was slippery today. A small mistake is easily made" - Victorious Van Empel has sympathy for rivals after faultless display in Herentals

She may have already been beaten more times this season than in the entirety of last winter, but there's no doubting the fact that Fem van Empel remains the dominant force in women's cyclocross.

On Saturday afternoon in Herentals, Van Empel was again the strongest of a high-quality field, crossing the line solo for a relatively dominant victory. That's not to say that the Dutchwoman had things all her own way though. The likes of Annemarie Worst, Ceylin del Carmen Alvarado and Lucinda Brand were all on Van Empel's case for a long while, although for the latter two, small crashes eventually dented their chances of victory.

"I am very happy. I’ve been working really hard the past few weeks,” Van Empel assessed in her post-race interview afterwards. “It actually went pretty well. I can’t complain, but there’s always work to be done. Technically, it’s very different on a cyclocross bike than on the road. But I’m definitely very happy with today.”

“I think it was just a matter of putting some pressure on the whole race. You can see at the end that they are coming back a bit. You have a target to ride towards. That was not entirely to my advantage, so I thought: if I just go all out on those climbs, I will keep them at a gap,” she concludes, noting the difficulties encountered by both Brand and Alvarado. “When you were the first to go down that descent, you could ride your own lines. But as soon as you are behind someone, you usually follow and you can't choose your own path. It was slippery and slippery today. Then a small mistake is easily made.”