Diegem always feels like its own little world in cyclo-cross. The floodlights flatten the shadows, the crowd noise sits right on top of you, and the course asks for quick decisions rather than big speeches. On Tuesday, 30th December 2025, the night cross delivered two races shaped by small moments that became decisive.
In the men’s race, Tibor Del Grosso backed up his Heusden-Zolder win with another Superprestige victory, turning a tense three-way fight into a solo finish when both Joran Wyseure and Thibau Nys hit the deck in the sand pit. In the women’s event, Puck Pieterse seized the opportunity created by Lucinda Brand’s absence, holding off a stubborn Marie Schreiber even after a late puncture threatened to reopen the door.
Men’s race: Del Grosso’s pace forces the mistakes
A chaotic opening set the tone. A crash on the start straight brought down multiple riders and immediately ruined the evening for Michael Vanthourenhout, who began the long chase after being caught in the incident. Up front, Del Grosso hit the technical sections first, committed early to the deep sand pit, and used that momentum to open the first proper gap of the race.
The initial advantage was small, but on a circuit where rhythm matters, it was enough to put everyone else into chase mode. Thibau Nys and Joran Wyseure were the two riders most capable of closing him down, with a strong group hovering behind that included Mees Hendrikx, Felipe Orts Lloret, Cameron Mason, Kevin Kuhn, Niels Vandeputte and others. Del Grosso’s real strength was how he carried speed through the course’s linking sections, making it difficult for Nys to close the last few seconds without spending something extra.
When Nys did finally make contact, the dynamic changed from pursuit to constant pressure. The Belgian repeatedly lost the wheel and had to fight his way back on, which matters at Diegem because every reconnection costs oxygen and forces you to take risks. Wyseure, meanwhile, played the long game brilliantly, bridging back into the front late and turning the race into a three-man fight heading into the final phase.
That is where Diegem’s sand pit did what it so often does under the lights. Del Grosso entered it with enough speed and enough space to treat it as an opportunity. Behind him, Wyseure and Nys both faltered and crashed in quick succession. It was the kind of moment that looks dramatic on screen, but the root cause was earlier: Del Grosso’s tempo had been forcing repeated decisions, and under fatigue the margin for error in that sand just disappears.
Once he had a handful of seconds, the race effectively ended. Nys tried to drag Wyseure back towards him, but with half a lap left the gap was already too big for a circuit this tight. Del Grosso rode the finish straight alone, then looked back to watch the battle for second unfold, with Wyseure holding on for second and Nys taking third.
Superprestige Diegem 2025 Men result
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Photo Credit: GettyWomen’s race: Pieterse strikes early, then survives a late scare
Lucinda Brand’s schedule choices have created rare windows this winter where the women’s racing feels genuinely open. Diegem was one of them. With Brand absent, the focus shifted to Puck Pieterse and Ceylin del Carmen Alvarado, while the course itself, fast but treacherous, made the start even more important than usual.
That opening minute was decisive for more than one rider. Inge van der Heijden crashed hard in the first corner, stayed down briefly, and then abandoned. It was a bitter blow given her position in the Superprestige battle, but the early incident also shaped the front of the race, because the pace did not ease while the field reorganised.
Pieterse, by contrast, launched into the night like she had been waiting for this exact race. She pushed on with real intent, and very quickly found she had company. Marie Schreiber was the surprise package, strong enough to match Pieterse when the Dutch champion tried to open the first gap. Alvarado bridged across too, forming a leading trio, but the sand pit became a recurring problem for her, and she soon slipped off the pace.
Pieterse’s key move came, fittingly, through the sand. She produced one clean, committed passage that finally snapped the elastic and put Schreiber into damage limitation. Pieterse then leaned into the parts of the course where she was sharpest, especially the descents and the barriers, and built a gap that hovered around 10 to 15 seconds. Schreiber never stopped racing, though. She held her lines, kept the pressure honest, and waited for the kind of twist that Diegem often offers.
It arrived in the form of a puncture. Pieterse rolled into the finish area and immediately knew something was wrong.
“I don’t know… I turned into the finish zone and I felt straight away that I had a flat tyre,” she said. The timing mattered. She had enough of a buffer that Schreiber could not fully capitalise, and the bike change came close enough to the pits for the situation to remain controllable. Still, it turned a calm final lap into a test of nerve, because suddenly Schreiber had the leader in sight again.
Pieterse responded like a rider who understood exactly what the race demanded. No panic, no over-riding. She steadied the technical execution, protected the sand pit, and made sure Schreiber never got the one proper drafting chance that might have changed the finale. The result was her first win of the cyclo-cross season, and her third victory in Diegem after previous successes in 2022 and 2023.
Alvarado finished third but described her evening as mixed, explaining that a poor start, the early crash, and then forcing the chase brought back trouble in her back. “I’m standing here with a bit of a double feeling. It was oké, but actually it was just bad,” she said, adding that the issue is something they will have to manage race by race during the busy period.
Superprestige Diegem 2025 Women result
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