On Boxing Day, an appointment in Dendermonde, Belgium: there will also be the “third wheel”, that is the British Pidcock
It is the great challenge of contemporary cycling: the Dutch Mathieu Van der Poel, 26, who races for the Belgian team Alpecin-Deceuninck, and the Belgian Wout Van Aert, 27, who wears the jersey of the Dutch team Jumbo-Visma. These are the weeks of cyclocross, which will culminate on January 29th and 30th with the World Championship in Fayetteville in the United States, in North Carolina, south of Richmond which in 2015 hosted the world championship of the road with the first of three consecutive victories of Peter Sagan.
Van Aert has started again in a great way: three out of three, the last triumph in the innovative cross from Vermiglio on the snow of Val di Sole, Van der Poel, on the other hand, is still in the pits: knee problems that have slowed down his preparation. The team speaks of “a deep wound” that VdP got in an off-road training and made him delay both the presence in the Alpecin rally in Spain and the specific training in cyclocross.
The debut was scheduled for Saturday 18 December in the World Cup in Rucphen, in his Netherlands. And instead Van der Poel will be seen for the first time on Boxing Day, December 26, in Belgium: also in this case, the World Cup race in Dendermonde. It will be here, in Flemish land, that is the Van Aert house, the first seasonal clash with the rival. It will be the race of the “big three”, namely Van der Poel, Van Aert and the British Tom Pidcock. Consider that of the last seven Cyclocross World Championships, four have been won by Van der Poel (2015, 2019, 2020, 2021) and three by Van Aert (2016, 2017 and 2018). It is their era.
It is not the first time that Van der Poel stops due to physical problems: the disastrous fall in the Olympic mountain bike test in Tokyo, on the day of the victory of the British Tom Pidcock, had forced him to skip the mountain bike World Championships in Val di Sole, in Trentino. And the delayed return to the road did not allow him to be at his best in the test he loves most: that Paris-Roubaix, where Sonny Colbrelli put him on the ropes (and then clearly beaten) on an infamous day, between rain and mud. It just happens to be the conditions that Van der Poel loves the most.
December 15, 2021 (change December 15, 2021 | 16:57)
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