Mathieu Van Der Poel (Image credit: Getty Images)
Minutes after winning the Antwerp round of the World Cup, Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck) said he will need to keep raising his game if he is to be certain of beating archrival Wout Van Aert (Jumbo-Visma) in their future cyclocross encounters.
In just his third cyclocross race this year, Van der Poel proved too strong for his competitors, attacking on the second lap and extending his margin until the final lap to take a faultless victory by 23 seconds.
The 27-year-old showed no visible signs of suffering despite damaging his knee during a heavy fall less than 24 hours earlier at the Superprestige Boom.
But while Van Aert was clearly defeated in Antwerp , Van der Poel nonetheless warned that if he wants to keep on beating his Belgian archrival in the coming weeks, he has to go on improving.
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“It still needs to be better in the future because Wout will also get better,” Van der Poel said.“Wout was immediately fairly strong for his first ‘cross, and he will also improve towards Christmas. I think there’s going to be a few really nice races in a busy period.”Despite showing his dominant […]
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