A look at this weekend’s Cyclocross races – 24th & 25th September 2022

The biggest race of last weekend – Exact Cross Kruibeke-Polderscross – saw big names take the victory. For the men it was Michael Vanthourenhout, who powered away from teammate Eli Iserbyt and former teammate Laurens Sweeck to take a comfortable win in the end. On the women’s side, it was Fem van Empel who has started this cyclocross season how she means to go on. She easily had the measure of the rest of the riders, finishing over a minute ahead of Annemarie Worst and Denise Betsema. The course conditions changed massively between the Women’s race and the Men’s race with an almost biblical downpour taking place in the middle. That meant we saw a lot more early season mud at Kruibeke than was initially expected.

The biggest race of this weekend is part of the Exact Cross Series again, this time at Beringen. Last year’s race saw Yara Kastelijn win ahead of Shirin van Anrooij. Kastelijn was still racing road last weekend and Van Anrooij is at the world championships in Australia.That should leave the way clear for the likes of Denise Betsema, Fem van Empel and Aniek van Alphen to improve on their 3rd to 5th finishes from a year ago. The men’s race was won by Eli Iserbyt ahead of Lars van der Haar this time last year. Both should be in contention once more and Laurens Sweeck also looks good for another visit to the podium, he finished 4th in 2021.

The American series saw Vincent Baestaens win, the independent rider just beating Eric Brunner by 2 seconds. He’s not down to race this weekend so it looks very much like an North American-only sort of races coming up. They’re televised on GCN/ES Player but may not tell us too much before the UCI World Cup race at Waterloo in a couple of weeks.

Kevin Kuhn and the Clauzel sisters look the obvious favourites for the Radcross Illnau race. Timon Rüegg will push Kuhn hard, like he did last year but the 1-2 should be set there. 

Finally, the Cyclo-cross international de Boulzicourt Ardennes sees XYZ