Fem van Empel returned to racing this weekend, winning Sunday’s sandy, windy first round of the 2024-2025 UCI Cyclocross World Cup in Antwerp, Belgium. It was her third consecutive Antwerp World Cup triumph. She now has 15 World Cup victories over the last four seasons. Canadian Sidney McGill’s European campaign kicked off with 35th.
Earlier in the day, Canada’s Nico Knoll, second in the national championships last week, won the Junior women’s race.
This season’s World Cup is 12 rounds running through Belgium, the Netherlands, Ireland, Italy, France and Spain, concluding January 26 in Hoogerheide, the Netherlands.
Preliminaries
Would Lucinda Brand and last season’s World Cup titlist Ceylin del Carmen Alvarado’s 2024-2025 rivalry continue in Antwerp? Brand, leader of the X2O Badkamers Trofee, hadn’t finished off a podium in 10 races while registering three wins. Superprestige series leader Alvarado had won six of 10.
World and European champion Fem van Empel was back racing Saturday after three weeks off, winning a round of Exact Cross; this season she had the Oudenaarde round of the X2O Trofee in her pocket. Puck Pieterse’s first race of the season is the Namur World Cup on December 15.
Pan-American champion Sidney McGill was the lone Canadian.
The Race
Marie Schreiber claimed the hole shot on Lap 1. Of the favourites, Alvarado got the worst start. Schreiber stayed on her bike in one of the sandy sections where others ran. The Luxembourg national champion and van Empel finished the first 3.285-km lap in 8:31, Annemarie Worst and Casasola their closest pursuers. McGill was 26th.
On Lap 2 Schreiber and van Empel continued their raid 20 seconds clear of Brand and Zoe Backstedt’s chase group. Brand lit out on her own in the middle of the circuit. Schreiber lost contact in one of the sandy sections and was nine seconds in arrears of Brand by the line. McGill still held 26th.
Lap 3 of 6 saw Brand continue to run down Schreiber. The order after Brand was Backstedt, Alvarado, Worst and Casasola. The woman in the rainbow jersey carried on at the business end of the race. By the midpoint of the opening round, van Empel was 28 seconds ahead of Brand, with Schreiber a further five seconds back.
Schreiber seemed unlikely to bring back Brand on Lap 4, and she had to keep podium-hunters…
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