Welcome to Escape Collective. Please select your language.
Please note that this is an automated translation and it will not be perfect. All articles have been written in English and if anything appears to not make sense, please double check in English.
If you’re skipping around the house singing “It’s the most wonderful time of the year” and you don’t mean Christmas, you may be a cyclocross fan.
The sport’s Kerstperiode, a packed season of holiday-time events that includes some of its most cherished, is almost upon us. But Santa decided to come early, delivering a fantastic weekend of racing that saw the return of several of its top names. Mathieu van der Poel and Tom Pidcock got their first starts of the season and came away with a win each (Pidcock on the second try).
On the women’s side, Fem van Empel’s purposeful rest-race-rest approach yielded another win but one that literally went down to the wire. And Ceylin del Carmen Alvarado continues what is her best season since 2020, with a rising run of form and confidence that sees her firmly in command of the World Cup series.
Even the courses are settling in nicely. Both the X2O round at Herentals and the Namur World Cup were agreeably muddy enough, but without the slopfests we’ve had in recent weeks (Namur in particular can be dangerous in extreme conditions).
It’s all leading in to a packed slate of races, starting Saturday with the Zilvermeercross in Mol and then Sunday’s World Cup in Antwerp, followed by Gavere the day after Christmas and five more races ending with New Year’s Day’s GP Sven Nys. Our usual Sunday (US) gallery schedule will get bumped a bit by the holiday. We’ll have a gallery on the 27th covering the first four races of the Kerstperiode, and another on January 2 to wrap up the racing. With so much racing, they’ll be even bigger than most of our galleries. Enjoy!
After skipping last weekend’s races, World Champion Fem van Empel got back to business quickly in Herentals.Not many racers have had a busier schedule than Anna Kay. She skipped Val di Sole last week in favor of Essen, but Herentals was still the 24-year-old British racer’s 19th start of the season.Van Empel was sporting some extra padding in Herentals after a training crash last week.Grey skies and short days – Denise Betsema does the winter work in Herentals.Former World Champion Lucinda Brand was also back in action after a weekend off and used her freshness to challenge Van Empel in a way no one has managed to this season.Annemarie Worst had a solid ride for her fifth podium of the year.Lucinda Brand pushed the bashed-up world champion almost to the limit, but Van Empel was able to out-sprint her compatriot after Brand regained contact late in the final lap.Happy ducks.The steep climb through the woods was a key obstacle in Herentals.To this point in the season, Niels Vandeputte has been the most-successful male racer for Alpecin-Deceuninck, capped by second place in last weekend’s snowcross in Val di Sole. He had another strong result for sixth at Herentals.Eli Iserbyt tried hard to hang on to Van der Poel’s coattails early in the race, but the World Champion was too strong, going solo in the first lap and embarking on “quite a long hour on my own” at the front of the race.Is that a mullet I spy, Mathieu?Lars van der Haar ended up in a three-way battle for second place.The world champion’s teammate Quinten Hermans was also making his debut appearance in a limited cyclocross campaign between road seasons.Van der Poel’s early solo move meant he had clear lines for every crucial part of the course.Van der Poel was almost minute clear of the chase just three laps in to the eight-lap affair, and cruised to a comfortable victory in his first race of the year.The World Champion’s fan club has eagerly awaited his first race of the year, and he didn’t disappoint, on the course or off.Sunday saw the cyclocross world focus in the Citadel of Namur, where it was attritional from the gun in the elite women’s race.World Cup leader Ceylin del Carmen Alvarado was in charge early doors, going solo and staying away in a brilliant return to form.Inge van der Heijden has rattled off an impressive run of top finishes at World Cups, including three top fives in her last four starts. She was fifth again on the technical Namur circuit.U23 World Cup leader Leonie Bentveld had a very strong start and finished high enough to maintain her overall lead.21-year-old Puck Pieterse had another good day out, duelling with Lucinda Brand for most of the race with the carrot of Alvarado hovering 10-20 seconds ahead of them.The long sidehill section gave riders in the women’s and men’s field fits. Brand was far from the only rider to go outrigger style on the tricky off-camber.It was a fantastic third World Cup victory of the season for Alvarado, whose comeback season is going from strength to strength; she’s now the *ahem* winningest elite woman in the World Cup, and naturally holds onto the leader’s jersey with a comfortable margin.Joris Nieuwenhuis’ sterling run of form seems to be going nowhere, though he admitted a lingering cold was bothering him this weekend.Nieuwenhuis and Baloise Trek Lions teammate Pim Ronhaar broke clear of the field early in the race. Both of them neatly demonstrate what’s commonly referred to as ‘tripoding’ along the vicious off-camber section.The deeply rutted off-camber section took many victims, including Tom Pidcock, whose chain mishap held him up while he was making his way towards the front on lap two.Pidcock’s mechanical allowed the likes of World Cup leader Eli Iserbyt to regain a few positions before the former World Champion was able to get going again.Meanwhile, up front, Pim Ronhaar proved the strongest of the Baloise Trek Lions duo …… but Pidcock’s mechanical came too early in the race to do anything but delay the inevitable, and the young Brit soon made his way up to Ronhaar’s wheel, where he stayed briefly until attacking on the penultimate lap.Ronhaar was unable to respond, and Pidcock powered away. There was a glimmer of hope for the chasing Dutchman when Pidcock suffered a front-wheel puncture late in the penultimate lap, but a luckily timed pit stop saw the leader on his way for the remainder of the race.After finishing best-of-the-rest behind Van der Poel on Saturday, Pidcock raised his arms in celebration on only his second race day of the CX season (and apparently only his third day on the CX bike … ) after an impressive display.Alvarado gave it a good go with the big beer but couldn’t quite make a dent. Pieterse and Brand both happily downed their normal-size drinks, but Alvarado pointedly carried hers off the podium and handed it to a soigneur with a laugh to hang onto for after the presser.
