Mathieu van der Poel, Belgian-born Dutch cyclist, left everyone speechless in an incredible display yesterday Sunday during the sixth World Cup of the 2024-2025 season, Zonhoven, the Netherlands. The UCI Cyclocross season goes from November 2024 to January 2025, with 12 World Cups spread throughout the season.
Mathieu van der Poel, winner of 38 individual world cups and seven World Championships, including the 2023-24 season, has showed an almost insulting superiority to the rest of cyclists. Despite he started on the 15th position, it only took him 72 seconds to reach the top place. His whole race lasted one hour 39 seconds.
He reached the final 1:30 earlier than the second, Thibau Nys, with the third one, Joran Wyseure, finishing +1:33, in a sport dominated by Belgians.
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After months of a much greater diversity in the podium, many cyclist might feel disheartening watching one man be so much superior to the rest, taking the race as his own high-intensity training session.
With his victory, van der Poel immediately adds 40 points, but after five races absent he has a lot of ground to catch to the head of the competition, which is led by Michael Vanthourenhout with 140 points... although he only finished tenth in the Zonhoven.
While most sports stop during the Holiday period, the cyclocross World Championship heats up, with races on December 26 and 29, in Belgium, Netherlands, France and Spain (Benidorm).