"it's an obvious choice" - Van der Spiegel argues World Tour teams should have 'cyclocross section'

Thomas van der Spiegel, president of Flanders Classics - which organizes the Cyclocross UCI World Cup - is surprised with the lack of World Tour teams that properly invest in cyclocross. With extra months of TV exposure and soon also more UCI points coming from the discipline to aid their World Tour license hunt, it is an interesting debate that comes from the Belgian.

As the main organizer of the World Cup, he explained the reasoning behind the latter start for the World Cup in the last two seasons. "Last year, we chose, together with the UCI, to start much later and concentrate the World Cup between the end of November and the World Championships," Van Den Spiegel said in words to WielerFlits. "It was a good decision, and the intention is to maintain this structure".

With the UCI's backing, the World Cup ultimately has more leverage to have calendar changes, but the change seems to have positively affected the Superprestige and X2O Badkamers Trofee as well, with all three cups having more condensed schedules than before, which would see most top riders not race any of the cups entirely due to the sheer amount of variables, calendar clashes and more than were present through October to the end of January or even February.

"We especially want to be present during the months when cyclocross is the number one winter sport in many countries, and that's certainly not October and November, let's be honest. Many road racers only finish racing at the end of October, and then their attention slowly shifts to cyclocross, peaking between December and January."

He was asked about the possibility of the discipline becoming a winter sport, something that has been proposed for 2030, but at the time being is unlikely to make for a successful bid.

"We are obviously happy to have shown in Val di Sole that cyclocross is truly a winter sport and to have brought it to the attention of the Olympic movement. The sport truly takes place in winter, and we continue to believe that cyclocross should be present at the Winter Games. But this is not our decision. For us organizers, it wouldn't change much, but for the sport itself, it does."

On the World Tour teams, he is surprised with the absence of many structures. On the men's side, only Alpecin-Deceuninck (Fenix-Deceuninck in the women's side) have a full-time squad racing in the discipline. Lidl-Trek collaborate directly with Baloise - Glowi Lions, but ultimately they are different teams and Lidl-Trek do not benefit sponsor or UCI-point wise from the partnership.

"It will be interesting to see what the impact will be; we need to see what it means in practice. At the same time, for me it's an obvious choice, and it's strange that no more WorldTour teams have a cyclocross section," he argues. "I've been saying this for years. You can go from 8-9 months of visibility to almost 12 months, with relatively limited budgets."

"They're not only the best cyclocross riders of their generation, but also among the top five road racers of the last decade. It's clear that we'd like them to be on the starting line as often as possible". As of the time being, it is expected that both will make a return to the discipline after the 20th of December, as both should be in Spain training with their respective teams, and the first few World Cup rounds do not take place neither in Belgium or the Netherlands.

"We understand that they can no longer start racing in October or November like when they were younger. But we have good relationships with their management to understand what's possible. We're trying to build a program together with them, without wanting to interfere too much," he concluded.