Lucinda Brand is getting into that familiar groove again. On the twisting, technical Aardbeiencross course in Merksplas she collected her second Superprestige win in a row and her sixth victory of the season, riding away halfway through the race and never looking back. Behind her, Aniek van Alphen and European champion Inge van der Heijden fought over the minor places – and the leadership in the Superprestige classification.
On paper, Brand was the clear favourite in Merksplas, with Van der Heijden and Van Alphen the most credible threats. The opening lap suggested it would not be straightforward. Leonie Bentveld and French champion Amandine Fouquenet made the sharpest start, punching into the first corners and immediately stretching the field. Van der Heijden quickly imposed herself, joining them to form a leading trio as the rest strung out behind. Brand and Van Alphen, just a couple of seconds back, needed the whole lap to close the early gap.
By lap two, the hierarchy looked more familiar. Brand and Van Alphen had made contact, creating a front group of four with Bentveld and Van der Heijden. The European champion kept the pace high, pressing on through the technical sections and forcing Fouquenet and then briefly Van Alphen off the back. Bentveld took over on the front with a confident spell, then Van Alphen threw in the first serious attack of the afternoon.
Brand turns sand hesitation into winning move and closes in on landmark streak
Everything came back together again through the sandpit. Until that point, the sand had not been Brand’s strongest section. Twice she had been forced to dismount and run where others rode. On the third pass, though, she nailed it. Where the others hesitated, she carried just a fraction more speed out of the sand, hit the mud with momentum and simply kept going.
At the end of that third lap her advantage was only three seconds, but it felt like a turning point. Van der Heijden put her head down on the front of the chase and tried to close the breach, yet the gap refused to shrink. The more the European champion committed, the more she exposed herself to mistakes. In the fifth lap she went down, slipped back to fourth and had to start over. Bentveld, who had been so lively early on, now rode in third while Van Alphen again settled into the role of main chaser.
Out front, Brand played it perfectly. She managed her effort so that she could arrive at the sand and the more awkward cambers with just enough “spare” to ride them cleanly. Once the elastic was properly snapped, she did not need to take any wild risks. The lead stabilised, then gently grew, and by the time the bell rang the win was no longer in doubt.
Behind her, the classification battle added an extra layer. Van der Heijden had started the day with a two-point lead over Van Alphen in the Superprestige standings. When the European champion crashed and drifted behind Bentveld, Van Alphen suddenly had the virtual series lead in her pocket. That seemed to sharpen both riders.
In the penultimate lap Van der Heijden reset, rode back past Bentveld and began to edge towards Van Alphen again. The gap shrank, but not enough. Van Alphen held firm to finish second and slash the overall deficit to a single point, while Van der Heijden salvaged third place and the jersey for at least one more round. Bentveld, after animating so much of the race, had to settle for fourth.
Brand, meanwhile, was celebrating more than “just” another win. Merksplas extended an extraordinary run of consistency: 49 consecutive cyclocross podiums, stretching back to January 2024.
“I am not really a statistics person, but this is very special,” she said afterwards. “For some people it might look normal, but it is not. I am really happy with it. In the sand I was not always the best, but exactly when the others had a little problem I could take my speed through and I thought: I will try it. It was immediately the right moment.”
On Sunday in Hamme she will chase podium number 50 in a row. On current form, you would not bet against her.
2025 Superprestige Aardbeiencross Merksplas Women result
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Photo Credit: GettyNieuwenhuis shrugs off early crash to crush the men’s field
If Brand’s win was a textbook example of timing and control, the men’s race in Merksplas was a story of recovery and then ruthless domination. Joris Nieuwenhuis hit the deck on the opening circuit, spent half the race fighting just to get back in touch, and then rode everyone off his wheel once he finally reached the front.
The Aardbeiencross layout was the same: nine laps of a 2.9 kilometre circuit that got heavier and muddier as the afternoon wore on, with planks and a sandpit late in the lap acting as natural launchpads for attacks. Joran Wyseure shot into the first corner for Crelan-Corendon, but Pim Ronhaar quickly took over, and it was Belgian champion Thibau Nys who led over the planks the first time, setting a fierce early pace.
By the end of lap one the race had already stretched into a long line behind Nys. Around fifteen riders were still in contention, but gaps were starting to open as mistakes accumulated in the mud. A bike change on lap two briefly shuffled Nys back, and it was Jente Michels for Alpecin-Deceuninck Development who led across the line, yet the Belgian star remained very much in the first rank.
On lap three the race tilted for the first time. British champion Cameron Mason used the planks as his springboard. Where Ronhaar opted to dismount, Mason bunny-hopped cleanly, kicked hard and carried that speed into the sandpit. Michels latched onto his wheel and the pair prised open a small gap, taking their advantage into lap four and scattering the pack behind.
Mason’s aggression did not deliver a definitive break, but it did force a major selection. As the laps ticked by, the front of the race distilled into a core group of five: Mason, Nys, Michels, Niels Vandeputte and Emiel Verstrynge. Only then did Nieuwenhuis finally appear where he belonged. After his crash on the opening circuit he had been buried in traffic, having to thread his way through riders and pick his moments carefully. By the start of lap five he had clawed his way across to the leaders and immediately joined in with the pace making.
From there, the pattern of the race changed again. Nys tried to reassert control, putting in a move that briefly thinned out the group, but once more the sand section proved his weak spot. Each time they hit that combination of planks, turns and sand, the same thing happened: those who could ride it cleanly opened daylight, those who faltered were forced into a draining chase.
For Mason and Nys, it became a recurring problem. Each time they slipped a few metres back, each time they had to scramble to regain contact. Behind, the rest of the favourites began to feel the strain too. What had been a five man group started to split into ones and twos, and when Nieuwenhuis finally launched his first real attack, nobody had the legs to follow.
The Dutch rider did not go with a single spectacular burst. Instead he applied steady, suffocating pressure, upping the tempo just enough on the heavier sectors that wheels began to open in front of him. A bike length became three, three became five, and then suddenly there was clear air. Once he had that gap, he never offered the others so much as a sniff of his wheel again.
Behind him, Vandeputte proved the most resilient of the chasers, eventually winning the fight for second place and, just as importantly, moving into the overall lead of the Superprestige series. Previous leader Michael Vanthourenhout had a difficult afternoon, sliding back to eighth, and with time gaps counting heavily in a season long competition his bad day opened the door for his rivals. Verstrynge completed the podium after another solid ride, underlining Crelan-Corendon’s depth even on a day when victory escaped them.
Up front, though, there was only one rider who mattered. Nieuwenhuis, already winner in Ruddervoorde and Rapencross, made Merksplas his third triumph of the winter and did it from a position that looked, for a time, almost lost.
“The start was really not what I wanted, I crashed and had to fight back,” he said in post race interviews. “But once I was there I could ride my own pace. On this course, with the mud and the sand, if you can keep it clean you can make a big difference. When I went, no one could really close it.”
Brand and Nieuwenhuis left Merksplas with different prizes – one extending a streak and shoring up her status as the reference rider of the women’s field, the other confirming that on the heavy, technical circuits of this winter he is fast becoming the man to beat.
2025 Superprestige Aardbeiencross Merksplas Men result
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