Lucinda Brand produced one of the most commanding performances of the season on the Citadel of Namur, riding away from the field and never giving her rivals even a moment of belief. On a course that punishes hesitation with steep climbs, technical drops and that famous off-camber slope, the Baloise Glowi Lions leader looked in complete control from the moment she hit the front late on lap one.
Amandine Fouquenet lit up the opening minutes with a trademark surge, cresting the brutal first climb ahead of the field as Inge van der Heijden tried to set a sharp early tempo after winning in Kortrijk the day before. Brand stayed calm, measured her effort, then surged to the head of the race before the end of the first lap and immediately began to stretch the elastic.
Behind her, the race settled into a chase shaped by both ambition and damage limitation. Puck Pieterse, making her season debut in cyclocross, looked lively through the opening third, briefly moving into the podium fight as she found rhythm on the climbs. But as the laps ticked by, the early intensity began to tell, and the more established cross specialists started to take control of the battle behind Brand.
Aniek van Alphen, still the World Cup leader, was the rider who most consistently held her pace across the full fifty minutes. She moved into second as Pieterse began to fade and then rode a controlled, disciplined race to secure another huge points haul. Fouquenet, meanwhile, backed up her early aggression with real substance, staying in the fight long enough to capitalise when Pieterse’s tempo dipped, and she claimed an excellent third place on one of the sport’s hardest circuits.
Brand even had time for a moment of jeopardy. A front-wheel puncture on the third lap could have been the opening the chasers needed, but she limited her losses, swapped bikes, and immediately rebuilt the gap with the kind of climbing power that has defined her winter. The numbers told the story by the finish: Van Alphen was 43 seconds down, Fouquenet exactly one minute back, with Pieterse fourth at 1:21.
Afterwards, Brand credited the foundation of the win to an unusually sharp launch from the grid. “I felt really strong. I just never have such a good start,” she said, explaining that she had expected Fouquenet’s early punch. “She always has an amazing start, and I try to just keep my own pace because the first lap here you can really blow yourself up. I just had good legs.”
On the puncture, she sounded more amused than alarmed, suggesting she always had the situation covered. “It was super stupid, but you know what can happen here. I just kept trying to ride, and if the wheel breaks, it breaks, we get a new one. I had enough of a gap, so it was good.”
Van Alphen, who defended her World Cup lead with second place, framed it as a day of managing what she had rather than chasing what she did not. “I knew that if I finished second behind Lucinda, I would stay in the lead,” she said. “But I’m so happy with another podium. The feeling wasn’t great, it was really heavy in the recon and the speed was high from the start. I had a difficult first lap, then I found my rhythm and could hold it to the end.”
2025 World Cup Namur Women result
Results powered by FirstCycling.com
Photo Credit: Cor VosMen’s race: Van der Poel seals sixth Namur win after late Nys crash in Citadel duel
The men’s race delivered the kind of Namur theatre the Citadel specialises in, with Mathieu van der Poel returning to cyclocross and immediately being dragged into a high-level tactical fight rather than a comfortable exhibition. Thibau Nys was the rider who applied the most sustained pressure, repeatedly forcing the pace and refusing to let the world champion ride within himself, while Michael Vanthourenhout and Lars van der Haar added depth and danger to an elite front group that kept reshaping as the course demanded.
Van der Poel’s opening phase was messy by his standards. A small slide at the start left him buried deeper than he wanted, but the familiar pattern soon appeared: corner by corner, climb by climb, he began to carve through the field, riding the off-camber section with a precision that instantly moved him into contention. Even a mid-race crash over the handlebars did not derail him for long. He remounted, reset, and used the course’s brutal climbing lanes to drag himself back into the decisive selection.
As the race entered its final third, it narrowed into a battle of timing as much as strength. Van der Poel’s first serious acceleration came late, on the cobbled climb, and it finally created daylight. Nys matched it, snapping onto the wheel and turning the final laps into a tense duel, with Vanthourenhout hovering close enough to punish any hesitation. Van der Haar, too, stayed relevant deep into the finale, ensuring there was no room for anyone to simply mark one rider.
The decisive moment came on the last lap, when Nys crashed and lost momentum at exactly the wrong time. Van der Poel pounced, driving the gap open with the kind of controlled violence that only appears when both fatigue and instinct take over. He rode clear to the finish to take victory by nine seconds, with Nys regrouping for second ahead of Vanthourenhout in third. Van der Haar held on for fourth after playing his part in the front-end chess match.
2025 World Cup Namur Men result
Results powered by FirstCycling.com
