Mathieu van der Poel Is Kicking Off His Cyclocross Season Early
Mathieu van der Poel’s fans will have to wait one less week than previously thought to watch him kick of his cyclocross season.
The 28-year-old Dutch superstar was originally slated to start a 14-race slate with the Exact Cross race in Mol, Belgium on December 22, 2023. However, following what he reports as a strong training camp, van der Poel recently announced he pushed that start date up one week, where he’ll compete at the X20 Trophy race in Herentals, Belgium this Saturday, December 16., 2023.
Van der Poel is the reigning World Champion in both cyclocross and road racing. He’s won the cyclocross worlds five times since first capturing those rainbows in 2015.
“I’ve trained well in Spain and I feel ready to start in X2o Badkamers Trofee Herentals,” van der Poel—who will turn 29 just a few days before the February 4, 2024 World Championship race—said in a statement released through his Alpecin-Deceuninck team’s social media properties.
Lining up alongside van der Poel in Herentals will be former World Champion, Inoes Grenadiers' Tom Pidcock, who is kicking off his own ten-race schedule. Conspicuously absent from the X20 race, however, will be Jumbo-Visma’s Wout van Aert, a Herentals native. Though he kicked off his cross season with a win at Exact Cross in Essen, Belgium, he won’t line up again until the December 22, 2023 race in Mol.
The Big Three of cyclocross will go head-to-head-to-head at least four times between now and early January; at the World Cup races in Antwerp, Gavere, and Hulst on December 23, 26, and 30 respectively, and at the X20 race in Koksijde on January 4, 2024.
Pidcock and MVDP will face off on at least three other race days. Meanwhile, at 14 scheduled races, van der Poel’s cross season is the busiest, much of that owing to the defense of his rainbow jersey.
Van Aert, on the other hand, has made it clear that he won’t let this year’s cross season distract from his focus on the Spring Classics, where he hopes to finally add wins at Paris-Roubaix and his hometown Tour of Flanders to his palmarès.
Somewhere in between the two longtime rivals is Pidcock, who in late November confirmed his ten-race cross schedule. Like van Aert, Pidcock is skipping out on the February 4, 2024 World Championship, which will be held in Tabor, Czech Republic. He’ll race from this Saturday through the January 21, 2024 World Cup race in Benidorm, Spain.
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