Mathieu van der Poel’s win streak continued in Sunday’s eighth round of the 2024-2025 UCI Cyclocross World Cup in Besançon, France. It was his fifth straight triumph in eight days, including a natural hat trick of World Cup rounds. In the overall standings, Sunday’s runner-up Toon Aerts cut Michael Vanthourenhout’s lead to 25 points at the top of the table. Van der Poel moved up from 11th to 6th.
Preliminaries
Van der Poel had stolen the limelight over the last two rounds, winning handily, but Vanthourenhout was 36 points clear of Aerts at the top of the table after earning two of the six rounds. Wout van Aert skipped Round 7.
Aerts was determined to snag the hole shot on Lap 1. Round 1 victor Eli Iserbyt was in trouble right away after a clip-in problem. Aerts rabbited away on the front and by the six minute mark was leading van der Poel, Filipe Orts nine seconds behind with van der Poel’s teammate Niels Vandeputte trailing the Spaniard.
On Lap 2 of 7 it was apparent that Swiss rider Loris Rouiller was on the ride of his life, chasing with Vandeputte. Just as Vandeputte was in touching distance of the lead duo, van der Poel made his move. Joran Wyseure dispatched Rouiller in his own podium bid. Aerts and Vandeputte trailed by 10 seconds after the second circuit. After getting snagged in the pits, Vanthourenhout was far down in 24th.
Wyseure had a 2024-2025 Superprestige round in his pocket, and he was intent on getting his second World Cup podium of the season, but he had 12 seconds to make up on Aerts and Vandeputte on Lap 3. Iserbyt climbed to 14th, but Vanthourenhout was still scrapping farther back.
The situation was as-you-were on the middle lap. Rouiller and Vanthourenhout met as the former dropped and the latter rose. Iserbyt fought into the top-5 on Lap 6.
Van der Poel was still riding smoothly and stylishly out front on the penultimate lap. Vanthourenhout stopped bleeding WC points, but Aerts was clearly in second, Vandeputte hovering two or three seconds behind.
Iserbyt had climbed to fourth by the time he heard the bell, but was 26 seconds in arrears of Vandeputte. Vanthourenhout squeezed by Swiss Kevin Kuhn into seventh where he finished. It was Vandeputte’s 10th podium of the season and Aerts’ fifth.
The next round is January 5 in Dendermonde, Belgium.
2024-2025 UCI World Cup Round 8, Besançon
1) Mathieu van der Poel (The Netherlands//Alpecin-Deceuninck) 1:04:57
2) Toon Aerts (Belgium/Deschacht-Hens-FSP) +0:20
3) Niels Vandeputte (Belgium/Alpecin-Deceuninck) +0:36
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