Has the cyclocross rivalry between Mathieu van der Poel and Wout van Aert, which stretches back more than a decade to their junior years, finally fizzled out?
Discussions of the ‘big three’ – Van Aert, Van der Poel and Tom Pidcock – clashing in the 2024-2025 cyclocross season are almost certainly moot with the Briton not committing to any ‘cross races this year.
Even the ‘big two’ will only meet four times this year – Van Aert announced a limited calendar of six races for the ‘cross season that doesn’t include the World Championships, and he and Van der Poel will only overlap in the Superprestige Mol and Exact Cross Loenhout in December and the Dendermonde and Benidorm World Cups in January.
It feels like the end of an era. Will cyclocross ever be the same again? Who can stop Van der Poel from soloing away from the field and winning by minutes in just about every race like he did last year?
The decline for cyclocross began when Van Aert joined the WorldTour in 2018 and Van der Poel followed the next year. With road racing the far more lucrative of the two sports, and both riders having success and future aspirations in the Spring Classics, they’ve cut down on the number of cyclocross events on their calendar each year.
It’s been a while since we’ve had the type of electrifying clashes between these two titans like the one in the World Championships in 2016 where the battle hinged on a physical run-in between the two, but even today they raise the profile of cyclocross beyond what ‘cross specialists like Sven Nys and Niels Albert ever achieved.
With the arrival of Pidcock to the mix, the ‘big three’ raised the prestige and interest in the sport even further.
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Even with Van der Poel’s dominance last year, where he only lost one of 14 races, Van Aert was still the only rider to beat the world champion in the Benidorm World Cup and in their seven head-to-head races, the Belgian was the only one to challenge Van der Poel in five of them.
It’s unlikely that Van Aert will be able to repeat that in 2025 as he has been recovering from a serious knee injury suffered in the Vuelta a España while Van der Poel has been healthy and able to prepare for the season without interruption.
There is a noticeable lack of superstars coming up through the cyclocross ranks to replace Van Aert and Van der Poel, too.
In the absence of the two so far this season, races have been more unpredictable and a bit more exciting. However, the top riders – Eli Iserbyt, Michael Vanthourenhout and Lars van der Haar – don’t have the same road caché or star power. Thibau Nys could yet emerge to fill the gap, but as of yet he has been unable to match the meteoric ascents of the ‘big three’.
Van Aert is 30 and Van der Poel will hit that mark in January, so time is running out for cyclocross to find high-profile riders to replace them in the men’s fields. On the other hand, the women’s races have provided some of the best shows in recent years with the arrivals of Fem van Empel and Puck Pieterse.
But even women like Marianne Vos and Shirin van Anrooij have reduced their ‘cross calendars to focus on the road.
There might be hope for the future, however. UCI sport director Peter van den Abeele told Wielerflits.nl last month that the UCI is considering allowing men’s and women’s teams to use UCI points gained in non-road disciplines toward their UCI World Ranking from 2026 on.
It might not make a difference to super-teams like Visma-Lease a Bike who aren’t worried about keeping their position in the WorldTour, but it could create a welcome infusion of cash and talent from the WorldTour into cyclocross, which has been on the decline since the rise of gravel over the past five years. It would also reward Intermarché-Wanty, who have a cyclocross team as part of their organisation.
Cyclocross needs this kind of innovation to have a future.
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