Mathieu van der Poel continues winter of domination, adding a ninth straight victory to his palmares in Koksijde

Mathieu van der Poel has powered to a ninth straight victory this winter in the now typically dominant style we have become accustomed to at the X2O Trofee in Koksijde.

In a fairly even start, all the big names such as Mathieu van der Poel, Wout van Aert, Laurens Sweeck and Michael Vanthourenhout were all still in the battle for the front in the early portion, although Lars van der Haar was distanced.

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At the end of lap 1 however, van der Poel made his move. This though, the elastic didn't snap straight away as Pim Ronhaar kept within 10 seconds for quite some time.

With four laps in the bag, the gap between van der Poel and Ronhaar had grown to 15 seconds. Behind them, the battle for the third spot on the podium was incredibly tight between van Aert, van der Haar, Vanthourenhout and Gianni Vermeersch.

Despite Ronhaar's best efforts though, van der Poel did begin to fully break free on lap 5, stretching his lead to over 30 seconds.

From there, the winner was in no doubt and fair play to Ronhaar, neither was second. In the battle for the final spot on the podium, it was van Aert who took it.