CX Gavere Men 2022 – Preview

By @EchelonsHub

The Course 

This is a big weekend, the penultimate one of the season and the one where the Telenet Superprestige and the X2O Trofee cups will be finished. Superprestige comes first, and it will be in Gavere that it will be decided. 

Eli Iserbyt will start the race with 83 points over Toon Aerts’ 79, and the scoring system here works that the first 1st rider across the line gets 15 points, whilst the 15th gets 1 point, and inbetween there is a 1-point gap between each rider. So for Aerts to be the winner of the cup he needs to finish the race inside the Top11 and at least 4 places of Iserbyt, whilst behind Lars van der Haar is likely to go through third placed Quinten Hermans who isn’t present. 

Although it won’t rain during the race, it is likely that the track will have some muddy sections due to recent rain, nothing too extreme though, but it will make for the first technical half of the track to be quite complicated. Very tight turns, short and steep ascents and a few off-camber sections make for a very draining start where it’s very easy to make mistakes and go ino the red. In the second half of the course the riders will find a climb which will span out for almost a minute making it the other crucial section of the course. The whole track is very grassy so it is prone to develop quite hard conditions throughout the day. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqAJlX4Xpps 

Recon of the track. Although not 100%, essentially all of the track remains the same.  

The Startlist 

Startlist provided by the organization, may not be correct. 

The Favourites 

It will be a hard race, and with the very technical features it has, surely one that will see gaps emerge right from the start, and a winning move to come likely within the first few laps I foresee. 

The biggest plot is sure to be the fight for the World Cup and although Eli Iserbyt is in the lead, things don’t look overly good for him as he frequently struggles in races where mud is present that features a lot of slow speed sections, whilst Toon Aerts will be hungry to win as many points as possible. Pauwels Sauzen, for sure, will be trying to race collectively as much as possible to prevent this from happening, either by pulling for Iserbyt or riding In Aerts’ wheel to steal points at the finish, or both if possible. 

It will all come down to what Iserbyt can do though. I wouldn’t expect Vanthourenhout and Sweeck to have that win as a priority because of likely team orders tomorrow, would expect an outsider win to come from either Lars van der Haar or who knows Niels Vandeputte who finished a brilliant second place in Lille last week in the mud. Tom Meeusen is also riding some very good form and can play a surprise. 

The field also features a lot of the U23 field, so riders like Pim Ronhaar, Mees Hendrikx and Emiel Verstrynge are for sure candidates for a Top5 on their best day, honestly the same can also be said for the less consistent but equally talented Joran Wyseure, Thibau Nys and Ryan Kamp. Talent is everywhere and many are capable of coming up through the field. 

Prediction Time 

1st– Toon Aerts 2nd– Lars van der Haar 3rd– Eli Iserbyt 4th– Niels Vandeputte 5th– Pim Ronhaar 

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Tomorrow’s race has prizes of at least €200 and an entry fee of only €5. Make good use of your knowledge! 

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