Mathieu van der Poel won his sixth cyclocross world title on Sunday in Tábor, Czech Republic. The rider from Hoogerheide started the race as top favorite. He won the World Cup for the first time nine years ago in the same place.
“This was the main goal,” he spoke to the NOS camera after a race in which there was no room for doubt as to who is the best cyclo-cross rider of this generation. Van der Poel said he wanted to enjoy himself for a while and would like to provide clarity about his program for the rest of the season in two weeks.
He can compete on both mountain bike and road bike at the Olympic Games in Paris this summer. “We will talk about this together with the team,” said Van der Poel.
Van der Poel was supreme in the Czech Republic on Sunday. He immediately took the lead on the difficult course, together with the Belgian Niels Vandeputte. Van der Poel’s compatriot Joris Nieuwenhuis joined the duo and they soon relieved the Belgian. Nieuwenhuis was the only one who could follow Van der Poel within a few seconds.
After the first lap of almost 3.5 kilometers, Van der Poel had an eight-second lead. The gap with the peloton was then 20 seconds. This was further expanded and although Nieuwenhuis continued to follow Van der Poel, he was unable to approach his compatriot any further.
At the finish, Van der Poel’s lead was more than half a minute over Nieuwenhuis, who took silver. Belgian Michael Van Thourenhout finished third.
“I wanted to take control of the race immediately and then took as little risk as possible,” Van der Poel analyzes the race. “If you puncture at the wrong time, your race is over. Quite a lot of stones came up, so I was very conscious about that. I didn’t do unnecessary things. It was about that jersey. It would be stupid to do that again. to fall or have a puncture, because you want to show how fast you can go through a bend.”