Key Takeaways: CX Worlds, AlUla Tour & GP La Marseillaise

Breaking down the key highlights and takeaways from a busy weekend of racing

With a blinding flurry of early-season racing taking place, I’ve curated a summation of the top highlights from the last batch of top-level road (and CX) racing from the past weekend that stuck out to me as dynamics that could affect the remainder of the season (pro tip: I watched most of these races on FloBikes using a Canada-based VPN and onto my TV via a Chromecast).

Below is a collection of key takeaways from Mathieu van der Poel’s domination at the Cyclocross World Championships, Tom Pidcock and 36.5's shockingly sharp performance at the AlUla Tour, and the underdogs' benefit from an Ineos final kilometer disaster class at the GP Cycliste de Marseille La Marseillaise.

Men’s Cyclocross World Championships (Sunday, Feb 2nd)

Start: Mathieu van der Poel, who is lined up on the front row, blasts off the start line, while his main rival, Wout van Aert, is further back due to a fourth-row start.

Lap 1 (31 seconds): This means that less than a minute into the race, Van der Poel is in the process of soloing to the win while Van Aert is still digging himself out of the massive hole and using a massive amount of energy to simply get to the front.

Lap 1 (3’37): Before Van Aert can even get even with the lead chase group, Van der Poel has already ridden off the front and is on his way to a seventh career World CX title.

Lap 3 (23’11): After suffering a minor crash and ripped shorts after being pinned against the barriers, Van Aert finally reaches and drops the lead chase group as he sets off in pursuit of Van der Poel, who is 38 seconds off the front.

Lap 8 (54’19): As Van der Poel begins his final lap, Van Aert is finally starting to look in rhythm as he chases Van der Poel and leaves the chase group behind.

Finish: Van der Poel crosses the finish line for a record-tying career World CX title, while Van Aert impressively limited the gap to 45 seconds, meaning he lost just ten seconds after making the massive effort to reach the front of the chase group, finishes second for the fifth time in his career, and the young Thibau Nys, a budding road star, comes in third.

Final Top Three:
1) Mathieu van der Poel (Netherlands) +0
2) Wout van Aert (Belgium) +45
3) Thibau Nys (Belgium) +1’06

Key Takeaways:

• Mathieu van der Poel is the best CX rider of all time: In addition to his record-tying seven World titles, the 30-year-old star has won six in just the last seven years. He has done this while putting minimal preparation and effort into the difficult discipline, and he is working to put together one of the most impressive one-day Classic resumes of all time.

• Wout van Aert strikes out again while putting in a quietly impressive ride: After coming back from a runner-up World CX Championship placing to Mathieu van der Poel in 2015 with three consecutive world titles, Van Aert has finished second to his main rival on four more occasions, and it is becoming more difficult to imagine him ever reclaiming his title as long as Van der Poel is present.

  • However, when we consider Van Aert’s long layoff prior to the season due to injury and how well he held the gap to Van der Poel after his poor start, he is likely much closer to the ultra-dominant World Champion than he appears at first sight.

    • Perhaps this will be enough to keep him coming back to Worlds in future seasons in an attempt to dethrone Van der Poel and get his fourth-world title.

• The course revealed the sport’s true hierarchy: The demanding course exposed the stark power gap between the three road stars—who filled the podium—and the dedicated CX specialists, reinforcing how much cyclocross’ draw of general cycling fans depends on crossover talent.

AlUla Tour (Tuesday Jan 28th - Saturday Feb 1st)

Stage 4
9.1km: On the short but extremely steep climb to the plateau stage finish, race leader Tom Pidcock attacks and easily leaves the rest of the lead group behind.

8.4km: By the top of the climb, less than a km later, Pidcock has a 27-second gap on the chasing group as he is behind the tough 8km-long flat slog to the finish.

500m: Despite a strong four-rider chase group rotating through behind (Alan Hatherly, Rainer Kepplingher, Johannes Kulset, Eddie Dunbar), Pidcock holds them off to take the stage win with a 12-second gap.

Stage Top Three:
1) Tom Pidcock (Q36.5 Pro Cycling) +0
2) Alan Hatherly (Jayco AlUla) +12
3) Rainer Kepplinger (Bahrain-Victorious) +12

Stage 5
28.8km-to-go: On the final stage, Uno-X, with three riders between 4th and 7th in the GC and a stage-winning threat in Alexander Kristoff, splits up the peloton in the crosswinds. Pidcock, who could have lost the GC right here, makes the split and is securely in the front group.

17.6km: The second group gets as close as 12 seconds, but they can never fully close down the Uno-X-driven group, and the gap soon blows out to nearly a minute.

800m: The lead-in to the final sprint is so fast, over 60km (40 miles) per hr, that everyone is spun out in a taut line.

Finish: With the sprint speed so high (80kmhr/50mph), nobody can come around Q36.5’s Matteo Moschetti, who was smartly positioned at the front inside the final km, as he wins ahead of Dylan Groenewegen (Jayco) and Juan Sebastián Molano (UAE).

Stage Top Three:
1) Matteo Moschetti (Q36.5 Pro Cycling) +0
2) Dylan Groenewegen (Jayco-AlUla) +0
3) Juan Sebastián Molano (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) +0

Overall Top Three:
1) Tom Pidcock (Q36.5 Pro Cycling) +0
2) Fredrik Dversnes (Uno-X Mobility) +1’09
3) Johannes Kulset (Uno-X Mobility) +1’12

Key Takeaways:

• Tom Pidcock is already turning the culture at Q36.5 around: Over the course of just five days, the young star increased his career road win total by 60% and took his first professional stage race victory when he won two stages and the overall classification.

  • While the level of his competition may have left something to be desired, the fact that he A) showed up to this race instead of racing the CX World Championships and B) arrived in what appears to be some of the best form of his career, shows us just how seriously he is taking his new team leadership role at Q36.5, who ponied up a significant amount of money to get him out of his long-term contract with Ineos.

  • Perhaps the most impressive aspect of Pidcock’s week wasn’t his personal accomplishments but how his arrival appeared to supercharge his previously languishing Q36.5 team.

    • For example, after just a week of racing, Q36.5 has nearly as many wins as they did in either of their two previous seasons, and has Matteo Moschetti, a sprinter who hadn’t won a race in over a year, placed on the top step of the podium against truly elite sprinters.

• The battle for UCI points is already shaping the racing dynamics: The aggressiveness at which Uno-X ripped the final stage to shreds to move two riders onto the overall podium and finish 4th on the stage should tell us just how seriously the second-division (ProTeams) are taking the mad dash for points as they realize no one outside of Lotto and Israel-Premier Tech will be promoted and are forced to jockey to finish in the top two second-division spots to secure invitations to the entire WorldTour calendar in the 2026 season.

GP Cycliste de Marseille La Marseillaise (Feb 2nd)

500m: The hard-charging four-rider breakaway featuring Axel Laurance (Ineos), Kévin Vauquelin (Arkéa-B&B Hotels), Timo Kielich (Alpecin), and (18-year-old) Paul Seixas (Decathlon-AG2R) is reeled in by the Cofidis-led peloton after any semblance of cooperation in the lead group breaks down.

400m: Directly after the catch, Cofidis is positioned perfectly at the front. Ineos’ Laurance slots in as close to the Cofidis leadout train at the front as he can, but, unlike Cofidis, his two Ineos teammates aren’t at the front ready to set up a sprint but are woefully out of position and isolated in the middle of the group.

Finish: This positioning means that on the slightly uphill run to the finish line, Cofidis rider Valentin Ferron can sprint by an impressive Vincent Van Hemelen from the tiny Flanders-Baloise team for the win, while Laurance, a strong uphill sprinter, is stuck in 8th without team support. Impressively, 18-year-old Seixas still finishes 5th in the sprint.

Final Top Three:
1) Valentin Ferron (Cofidis) +0
2) Vincent Van Hemelen (Team Flanders-Baloise) +0
3) Francisco Galván (Equipo Kern Pharma) +0

Key Takeaways:

• Cofidis sets an important early tone: As the last ranked team in the 2023-2025 promotion/relegation rankings, the long-standing French team had some pressure to come out swinging to fend off a long-shot pursuit by Uno-X, but with a fantastically executed win on the traditional road season opener, they have done a great job of setting the tone for the months to come.

• Ineos’ lack of direction is laid bare: Contrasted with Cofidis’ impressive preparation to set up Valentin Ferron’s sprint win after the late catch of the breakaway, then Ineos’ completely disorganized structure and “every man for themselves” ethos stood out.

  • Once again, their strong, aggressive riding throughout the day saw them leave the race with nothing to show for it despite having a collection of potential winners who could not overcome more organized and focused competition.

  • Part of the reason this fairly insignificant early-season race is so alarming for Ineos is that it highlights an issue that Daniel Friebe from The Cycling Podcast recently pointed out, which is that, as currently constructed, this Ineos team could put together a very good season of racing while struggling to win many, if any, significant races.

    • While it would be unfair to expect Ineos to win every race they show up at, being thoroughly outmaneuvered in a race with just six WorldTour teams and Flanders-Baloise, the 59th-ranked team in the 2024 UCI Team Rankings, finishing ahead of them, highlights the enormity of the former superteam’s problems as they enter the 2025 season.