Wout van Aert and the rag that almost ended his race at the Dublin round of the CX World Cup. Ireland hosted a thriller event as Fem van Empel and Wout van Aert came out on top, providing top-notch entertainment along the way.
I’m no cyclocross expert. I only added it to my winter viewing schedule last year in search of stories to write up of a weekend, and it was a learning process for me. I watched and familiarised myself with the names which populate the top 10, the various perplexing obstacles that characterise the different courses, and learned to recognise all the ways it’s different from the kind of bike racing that is my specialty, from the obvious to the less-so.
Being in the lead from the start is not a disadvantage, in fact, it’s where you want to be. A lead of just a few seconds, which on the road would be little more than momentarily losing the wheel, can quickly become an impossible margin to close, barring mechanical or other disaster. Furthermore, it seems fairly rare for a race to come down to a sprint, and almost never between more than three, maybe four, riders.
I’ll admit: it’s this, the fact that some races see their winner go off the front in the first few laps of the hour-long event, that has had me only half-watching some weekends, or switching off altogether; one rider scorching away from the field and stretching out an unassailable margin does not make […]
Continue reading the original article at: cyclingtips.com