CX World Championships Men Elite – Preview
The Course
It’s World Championships time, the USA are hosting this event this year and will once again be taking in some of the best cyclocross riders in the world, in the town of Fayetteville, Arkansas. This isn’t an unknown route, Fayetteville has had a World Cup race already this year and the route the riders will face will be 95% the same, with the exception of a slightly longer transition zone.
What’s it like? Nothing like the classical Belgian track which are usually packed with technical features, and frequently with grueling climbs, gruesome mud sections or heavy sand sections. Here you don’t find much of that, it is in fact an extremely fast track, built on a grassy park this course is very wide from one end to the other and only the rain can make it a race that is easy to create and establish differences, as it happened back in September, however it doesn’t appear to be the case this week.
Now, there will be plenty of riders doing recon of the track, and these cold February nights in Arkansas go deep into the freezing temperatures, so I believe that during these recons (and races) the track will gain some ruts in some of the downhill corners so it won’t be a perfectly smooth ride, but nevertheless it will be a race where strategy counts, going over the red too early is hardly a good idea as there are many sections where slipstreaming is beneficial and the hardest sections (named “The Climb” and “The mound”) are quite long, so it’s really important to save up the legs in order to be as fresh as possible for those features in every lap. Non-tight corners, wide fields and 1 running section (if everything goes to normal) make it a rather weird race, but one that should see exciting competition.
The Startlist
| 1.MVDP – DNS | 2.Lars van der Haar | 3.Corne van Kessel | 4.Eli Iserbyt |
| 5.Toon Aerts | 6.Michael Vanthourenhout | 7.QH – DNS | 8.Laurens Sweeck |
| 9.Vincent Baestaens | 10.Daan Soete | 11.Jens Adams | 12.Toon Vandenbosch |
| 13.Joshua Dubau | 14.Clement Venturini | 15.Kevin Kuhn | 16.Gilles Mottiez |
| 17.JD – DNS | 18.Gioele Bertolini | 19.Nicolas Samparisi | 20.Antonio Folcarelli |
| 21.Felipe Orts | 22.Kevin Suarez | 23.Matej Ulik | 24.Michael Boros |
| 25.Thomas Mein | 26.Tom Pidcock | 27.Ben Turner | 28.Eric Brunner |
| 29.Curtis White | 30.Kerry Werner | 31.Gage Hecht | 32.Lance Haidet |
| 33.Caleb Swartz | 34.Scott McGill | 35.Brannan Fix | 36.Andrew Dillman |
| 37.Ben Frederick | 38.Marcel Meisen | 39.Guy Leshem | 40.Timoteo Nystrom |
| 41.Michael Van den Ham | 42.Brody Sanderson | 43.Tyler Orschel | 44.Malcolm Barton |
| 45.Jarno Trey |
The Favourites
The world championships. Pressure is going to be at all time high, with no Mathieu van der Poel and Wout van Aert in the startline some riders are having a rare, and others are having an unique opportunity to get the rainbow jersey, and there are several contenders, surely some will be cracking with tension at all times during the race.
There is no main favourite, over the last few weeks we’ve seen several close – and very exciting – battles and tomorrow will be no exception. A fast route, strategy will be important and I cannot stress how much nerves will be showing. The Belgians for example find an almost unique opportunity, riders like Toon Aerts and Michael Vanthourenhout can actually become world champions, they have been consistent and very strong throughout the season, they can do something big here specially if the race goes full-on from the start.
On the more explosive side you have Eli Iserbyt, World Cup winner, in theory a track that suits him but he is all or nothing, he either wins or doesn’t get a medal likely. Will he be on a good day? If so he can definitely take it, his Dutch replica Lars van der Haar has also came into great form this year and after becoming European and Dutch champion, he actually has the chance to do all three in the same year. But the bookies’ favourite is Tom Pidcock and for good reason, although it was perhaps expected he hasn’t managed to particularly step ahead of the competition in the last month. What Pidcock has in his advantage is the long climb which will be repeated plenty times, it’s a long effort that suits his skillset of long ascents and lightweight physiology.
Fayetteville winner earlier in the year Quinten Hermans hasn’t been able to make the travel over, his teammate Corne van Kessel will be in contention for the medals if he finds himself on a great day, and other riders like Laurens Sweeck and Jens Adams can also do so.
Prediction Time
1st– Tom Pidcock
2nd– Eli Iserbyt
3rd– Lars van der Haar
4th– Toon Aerts
5th– Michael Vanthourenhout
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Rúben Silva
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