The Waaslandcross was another race held on a relatively dry and fast course and was won, in a style reminiscent of seven-time world champion Mathieu van der Poel, by the world champion’s Alpecin-Deceuninck teammate Niels Vandeputte in a 9-lap solo. The 24-year-old Belgian accelerated not long after the start of the race and never had to look back over his shoulder.
His lead after lap 1 was 12 seconds, and it grew by 10 to 12 seconds every lap until he began taking it easy on lap 5 to avoid a crash or other misfortune. So much for the belief that without van der Poel, cyclo-cross races are much more competitive. Perhaps that should be amended to “without Alpecin-Deceuninck riders”. The winner’s final margin over second-place Lars van der Haar (Baloise Glowi Lions) was 25 seconds, with Michael Vanthourenhout (Pauwels Sauzen–Cibel Clementines) coming third at 32 seconds.
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The 32-year-old Vanthourenhout turned the tables on Sunday in Brussels, coming out on top after a tight duel with Joris Nieuwenhuis (Ridley Racing Team) to win by 8 seconds, with van der Haar taking another podium by finishing third, 41 seconds adrift.
Vanthourenhout’s teammate Eli Iserbyt, who finished fourth at 1:07 seconds, won the X2O Trofee series title for the fourth time. The series is determined by time, with finishing times added and bonus seconds subtracted at certain stages of a race. Iserbyt’s winning total was 8:07:46, 3:38 better than series runner-up Toon Aerts (Deschacht-Hens-FSP), who saw any chances he had of winning the race and the series vanish when he crashed heavily in the mud early in the race and could finish no better than seventh.
Vanthourenhout initiated the duel when he accelerated away from the leading group of riders midway through the race, followed closely by Nieuwenhuis. They soon opened up a 10-second lead on their pursuers, led by van der Haar. Vanthourenhout, who won this season’s cyclo-cross World Cup championship, was better on the technical turns but could not put his rival away until a lumpy off-camber section late on the final lap.
“On the off-camber section, I tried to go full gas and it was enough to win,” the winner said after the race.
There was much drama throughout the season, starting with Iserbyt’s three-race suspension for stomping on rival Ryan Kamp’s bike during the Exact Cross race in Beringen in October. His suspension put an end to his attempt to win a second Superprestige title in a row. That series title went to Vandeputte, with van der Haar finishing second and Vanthourenhout coming third.
But let’s face it. Though there was lots of drama from race to race during the season, the real racing excitement came when van der Poel and Wout van Aert (Visma–Lease a Bike) lined up at the start beginning around Christmas, not only because of their intense rivalry but also because they are simply much better riders than the rest of the cyclo-cross riders, in terms of both power and bike-handling.
A fractured rib suffered in a crash sidelined van der Poel for a few races, but that did not stop him from winning in typically dominant fashion each of the eight races he entered, including his seventh World Championship in Liévin, France, which tied him for most ‘cross world titles with the late Erik De Vlaeminck. That performance was certainly the highlight of the season.
Van Aert was handicapped by having to start far back in the races he entered and encountered bad luck while trying to make up lost ground in several races, including in the Cyclo-cross World Championship, where he finished second. But he won two races and was clearly the second-best rider in the discipline. With their priorities lying elsewhere in cycling – van Aert is primarily a road racer, and van der Poel is now looking to win the MTB world title – we will have to continue being satisfied with small homoeopathic doses of their riding on the cyclo-cross circuit in the coming years.
