Waterloo CX World Cup gallery: A new Nys rises while Queen Fem reigns

by Marshall Farthing Oct 17, 2023 More from Marshall Farthing+

Intro and captions by Joe Lindsey

For fans of the sport of cyclocross, Thibau Nys needs little introduction. World Champion, winner of four World Cup rounds last season and, of course, son of one Sven Nys, one of the greatest racers in the discipline's history. Thibau Nys' own legend has grown in the making, not least for his uncanny ability to ride up stairs.

Nys employed the technique on Sunday to win the season-opening Waterloo round of the Cyclocross World Cup. Speaking of steps, while Nys is no stranger to the top one on the podium, Sunday was a breakthrough all the same: his previous World Cup victories all came at the U23 level, as did last year's World Championship, which is why he's not wearing rainbows in these photos.

No, none of the Big Three were there, although former CX World Champion Tom Pidcock was prowling around stateside not long ago for the Little Sugar marathon mountain bike race. But little does that matter for Nys, who faced down European and Belgian champion Michael Vanthourenhout, a host of Trek teammates, and three-time Waterloo winner Eli Iserbyt for the win. That the victory came in Waterloo – home to Trek, which title-sponsors both the race and his Baloise-Trek Lions team – was all the sweeter. Big Three or no, we'll certainly see more of Nys in the elite fields, if not this year, then soon: he's only 20.

Rainbow jerseys were present in Waterloo, however, as reigning world champion Fem van Empel showed up to defend her win here last year, going against newly crowned mountain bike World Cup series champion Puck Pieterse, former world champion Ceylin del Carmen Alvarado, and U23 world champion Shirin van Anrooij. Van Empel fought through some early barrier issues to take a convincing solo victory over Pieterse, with Alvarado third.

Escape Collective member Marshall Farthing was on hand and gracious enough to share this fantastic gallery. Farthing is a photographer and engineer based out of Detroit, Michigan and San Francisco, California. While his day job may be spent working on self-driving cars, he spends his weekends covering events in the cycling and automotive worlds, and we're excited to share his work.

After its one-stop North American visit, the World Cup returns to European soil on October 29 in Maasmechelen, Belgium. That's not all: the long-running SuperPrestige series kicks off on October 22 with the Vlaamse Druivencross in Overijse, Belgium.

You may be wondering: this is great, but what are Escape's plans for cyclocross coverage? More like this, honestly. We're not going to do "and then Van der Poel attacked in a chicane on lap two"-style reports, but we do plan to bring you weekly roundup galleries from the biggest events: World Cups and the SuperPrestige and X20 series, chiefly. We'll buttress that with brief results and notable news, but galleries will be the center of our coverage, and we're pretty pleased that Marshall has started us off with a bang.