Mathieu van der Poel, facing his first CX race in 34 days due to a rib injury, won Saturday’s trudge-through-the-sludge penultimate round of the 2024-2025 UCI World Cup in Maasmechelen, Belgium. Mishaps battered Wout van Aert in his final mud meeting with van der Poel, the Visma rider 24 days away from his road season debut. Michael Vanthourenhout wrapped up the title with a race to go.
Preliminaries
The Benidorm round was important for Vanthourenhout’s World Cup title aspirations, as he increased his lead over Toon Aerts to 33 points. New Dutch champion Thibau Nys won in Benidorm, while his teammate Lars van der Haar had taken last year’s round in Maasmechelen. Nys and Niels Vandeputte were absent.
The Canadian contingent was Cody Scott and Tyler Clark.
Van der Poel started from Row 2 and van Aert was in Row 4. Emiel Verstrynge snaffled up the hole shot on Lap 1. Joris Nieuwenhuis, who finally got his season underway in the Dutch nationals, was on Verstrynge’s wheel. Van Aert went hard shoulder to post. Nieuwenhuis assumed the lead with Ridley teammate Filipe Orts on his six. Van der Poel muscled up to second when van Aert was seventh. Aerts found Vanthourenhout five spots ahead of him. Clark was 47th.
Heading into the off-camber section of Lap 2, three Dutch riders were in the front: Nieuwenuis, van der Poel and van der Haar. Van Aert was Position 5. Soon van Aert supplanted van der Haar and, along with Vanthourenhout, this little gang put daylight between themselves and the rest of the string. Van Aert crashed and had to straighten out his bars. Clark was 48th.
Van der Poel was free to fly and hit the line going into Lap 3 of 7 with a 19-second lead over van Aert–who again popped up from a crash and carried on–Nieuwenhuis and Vanthourenhout. The chase group nearly doubled. Heading into Lap 4, van Aert chased alone 37-seconds in arrears of his great rival but to tremendous cheers. Aerts was ahead of Vanthourenhout.
With van der Poel far ahead of van Aert, and the Belgian chasing solo, the Podium Battle was between Joran Wyseure, Nieuwenhuis, Vanthourenhout, Aerts and Laurens Sweeck.
Nieuwenhuis shook off his companions on the penultimate lap, Wyseure gamely chasing while Aerts, Vanthourenhout and van der Haar exchanged glances.
Van der Poel must be the favourite to…
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