After waffling for a couple of days on his participation, 2025-2026 UCI CX World Cup leader Mathieu van der Poel raced Sunday’s tenth round in Benidorm, Spain and romped to victory. He is now 10 for 10 this season. Spanish champion Filipe Orts delighted the home crowd with third place, his first Big Three series podium of the season. Cameron Jette was top Canadian in 47th.
Preliminaries
Having won five of the last six rounds, van der Poel had a ten-point lead at the top of the classification. Three-round victor Thibau Nys sat in second and absent Michael Vanthourenhout was a further three points behind. Nys claimed last year’s Benidorm round on a slightly different course. Orts was thrilled to be racing at home.
Sunday’s Canadian chaps were Cameron Jette and Cody Scott.
Tibor del Grosso repeated as Dutch national champion last weekend, and he claimed the first lead after the green light, van der Poel lurking. The string wound through the mud puddles. Third-place Toon Aerts crashed on the second plank and delayed Orts and Nys. Suddenly, there was a gap between the two Dutchmen out front and Niels Vandeputte. Nys chased. Van der Poel and del Grosso were six seconds ahead of Nys. The climb to the finish line detached del Grosso. Scott was 39th and Jette 47th.
The world champion was loose, and on Lap 2 del Grosso and Nys could only watch the Alpecin-Premier Tech rider shrink in the distance. There was a chance that MvdP wouldn’t race both final rounds of the series, so Nys raced hard to ensure as many points as possible in a bid for the overall win. He had del Grosso and Joris Nieuwenhuis for company. Scott was 44th and Jette 48th.
Heading into Lap 3 of 8, the trio of chasers had a lot of dudes crowding them. Soon there were eight chasers. Nieuwenhuis tried to put real estate between himself and the others. The world champion’s lead was 36 seconds.
Mees Hendrikx impressed by sticking with del Grosso, Nys and Nieuwenhuis on Lap 4. Nys took a fresh bike.
The chase having grown again going into Lap 5, Orts decided to do a flyer to the delight of the crowd. Nys, del Grosso and Niewenhuis labored to bring him to heel.
Nys found Orts at the beginning of Lap 6 and the new duo carried on like they were set on the podium. Hendrikx led the pursuit. Scott had climbed off the bike…
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