Key Takeaways: Tour Down Under & Benidorm CX
Breaking down an epic and unorthodox Cyclocross showdown as well as the opening weekend of the 2024 road racing season
With 2024’s opening WorldTour racing weekend behind us following the conclusion of the Tour Down Under, the Benidorm CX World Cup showdown serving up a thrilling Cyclocross showdown between Tom Pidcock, Wout van Aert, and Mathieu van der Poel, and the Mallorca Trofeo series and GP La Marseillaise (how-to-view details at the end of the post) taking place over the rest of this week and weekend, it is clear that the 2024 season has officially arrived.
Since actually watching all of these races is a tall task for anyone who has anything resembling a life, I’ve done the work for you and pulled out the main highlights and takeaways from the last few days of racing below:
Benidorm CX
Final Top Five Results:
1) Wout van Aert +0
2) Michael Vanthourenhout +3
3) Thibau Nys +7
4) Eli Iserbyt +7
5) Mathieu van der Poel +12
Lap 2/9: The Big Three (Wout van Aert, Mathieu van der Poel, and Tom Pidcock) all have slow starts. Van Aert weaves his way through traffic to the front of the race, while Pidcock and Van der Poel are stuck behind.
Lap 3/9: With Van Aert pushing the pace in the front group, Van der Poel unleashes a thermonuclear attack on the course’s slightly uphill paved section in an attempt to bridge.
Lap 3/9 cont.: The move is so powerful that in the span of a few moments, Van der Poel nearly makes contact with the Van Aert-led front group.
Lap 6/9: Once he catches back on, Van der Poel attempts a few attacks to rip off the front as he has throughout this season, but the fast course doesn’t allow him any separation from Van Aert.
Lap 8/9: While they are going through a fast corner, Van der Poel suddenly disappears from the pace-line, and we later see him slowly re-mounting his bike due to an off-camera crash.
Lap 9/9: With Van der Poel out of the picture, Van Aert starts to whittle down the front group, eventually forging clear after using his superior speed and power to blitz Michael Vanthourenhout on the uphill paved sector.
Lap 9/9: While appearing to cruise to victory, Van Aert biffs a re-mount and suffers an ill-timed crash. He quickly gets back up but loses his damaged saddle in the process, which means he has to hold off Vanthourenhout, now just a handful of seconds back, without being able to sit down fully.
Lap 9/9: Despite the lack of a saddle, Van Aert navigates the remaining technical sector well to hold off a fast-chasing Vanthourenhout to win what was undisputedly the most exciting and talent-stacked ‘cross race of the season.
Finish: The potential pain Van Aert has been suffering through comes to light when he sits up to celebrate the win, and we see he has been sitting on the bare rails.
Key Takeaways
1) Benidorm was the best race of this CX season and functioned as a defacto World CX Championships
Despite objections from hardcore Belgian cross fans, this race, which featured a head-to-head-to-head showdown between the sport’s three major stars, was the best race of the 2023/2024 Cyclocross season and, due to Van Aert and Pidcock opting out of the remainder of the CX season to prepare for their upcoming road campaigns, acted as a defacto World Championships.
Even if Pidcock crashed on the final lap and ended up finishing in 12th, the fact that he was able to work his way up into the lead group, and that top CX specialists like Michael Vanthourenhout and Eli Iserbyt were able to stay in the mix with Van der Poel and Van Aert due to the fast Spanish course, made the action, while unorthodox, fantastic to watch.
2) As Van der Poel pushes for a sixth CX World title, Van Aert and Pidcock are clearly pulling back from the discipline to focus on other objectives
After pulling out an impressive victory over the best CX specialists and his cross-discipline rivals, Van Aert immediately played down the outcome and instead emphasized that he was simply happy his pre-season training had him in good form heading into the road season.
This sentiment signals that Van Aert clearly believes he has bigger fish to fry in 2024 (i.e. Flanders, Roubaix, Giro (GC?), and the Olympics) and that he is on track for a great season while also showing us that, along with Tom Pidcock, who is clearly not as focused on CX as he has been in year’s past, they have somewhat outgrown the discipline as they attempt to check off boxes in the world’s biggest road races.
Contrast this with Van der Poel, whose 10 victories through the first 11 CX races and plan to contest the remainder of the season, show that even after five World CX titles, he is contesting CX wins just as seriously as he was nearly a decade ago.
While this is impressive, it does beg the question of whether this is a good decision for an aging rider with a few chronic injury issues and incredibly ambitious 2024 season plans. In some ways, it has started to feel like a college graduate hanging around campus parties long after they have left school and started an office job.
3) Michael Vanthourenhout is one of the only riders capable of challenging Van der Poel at the CX World Championships
With Pidcock and Van Aert opting out of the remainder of the Cyclocross season, it would be understandable to assume that Van der Poel will easily cruise to a sixth career Cyclocross victory.
However, over the last few weeks, Michael Vanthourenhout has shown he is one of a small handful of riders who could leverage his extreme CX focus to challenge Van der Poel, who will be in the swing of road season training, at February’s World Championship.
Something to consider is that Vanthourenhout woke up at 4am to catch a 6am flight from Belgium to Spain the morning of Sunday’s race and still finished a strong second (imagine what he could do on a full night of sleep).
2024 Tour Down Under Stages 5-6
Catch Up:
Tour Down Under Stages 1-4
Final Overall Podium
1) Stephen Williams (Israel Premier Tech) +0
2) Jhonatan Narváez (Ineos) +9
3) Isaac del Toro (UAE) +11
Stage 5
5.2km-to-go: With Isaac del Toro in the race lead, UAE attempts to keep him at the front as they lead into the extremely fast Willunga hill climb, but with only a single rider in front of Del Toro and multiple riders behind him and/or struggling to get to the front, their execution is sloppy and leaves their leader eating a ton of wind at a crucial point.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Beyond the Peloton to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.