CX World Championships Women Elite – Preview
By @EchelonsHub
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 January nights in Arkansas go deep into the freezing temperatures, so I believe that during these recons (and races) the track will gain some small 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.Lucinda Brand | 2.Marianne Vos | 3.DB – DNS | 4.AW – DNS |
| 5.Inge van der Heijden | 6.Ceylin del Carmen Alvarado | 7.Yara Kastelijn | 8.Manon Bakker |
| 9.Silvia Persico | 10.Eva Lechner | 11.Alice Maria Arzuffi | 12.Rebecca Gariboldi |
| 13.Sara Casasola | 14.Sanne Cant | 15.Alicia Franck | 16.Raylin Nuss |
| 17.Clara Honsinger | 18.Caitlin Bernstein | 19.Erica Zaveta | 20.Anna Megale |
| 21.Rebecca Fahringer | 22.Hannah Arensman | 23.Sunny Gilbert | 24.Emily Werner |
| 25.Crystal Anthony | 26.Helene Clauzel | 27.Perrine Clauzel | 28.Caroline Mani |
| 29.Anais Morichon | 30.Lucia Gonzalez | 31.Anna Kay | 32.Elisabeth Brandau |
| 33.Maghalie Rochette | 34.Sidney McGill | 35.Ruby West | 36.Siobhan Kelly |
| 37.Kata Blanka Vas | 38. Katerina Nash | 39. Maria Larkin |
The Favourites
It’s the biggest race of the season, some would say. Many were important, many classifications were crucial, but one race dreams to win is the World Championships and we have a field of contenders licking their lips for the possibilities of a rainbow jersey tomomrrow.
A women’s field though, that despite high quality is lacking some big names, some will be racing in the U23 category whilst others like Betsema and Worst are missing due to illness. The battle for the rainbow mainly relies on two names, Lucinda Brand is the first, reigning world champion, winner of the World Cup, Superprestige and X2O, a dominant figure if you’ve ever seen one. On the other there is Marianne Vos, an irregular figure in the scene, but of legendary status and for good reason. She has won the nationals and Hoogerheide in front of Brand in the last few weeks and is perhaps in prime position for the win.
For the podium fight we should see a fight between Ceylin del Carmen Alvarado who has come into very good form finally and Inge van der Heijden from the Dutch side. Mannon Bakker is also a possibility if she finds good legs, but there is strong competition from the likes of Kata Blanka Vas who decided to skip the U23 race in order to dream bigger.
Silvia Persico, Sanne Cant and Hélene Clauzel are all reasonable candidates for a Top5 aswell, and home rider Clara Honsinger is also a dangerous name to watch for having the world championships in her home country.
Prediction Time
1st– Marianne Vos
2nd– Lucinda Brand
3rd– Kata Blanka Vas
4th– Ceylin del Carmen Alvarado
5th– Silvia Persico
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