Nys rides away to muddy win in Ronse

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A stormy afternoon in Ronse turned the already demanding course at the Hotondberg into an even harder test for the riders. The GP Mario De Clercq, the first round of the Bpost Bank cyclo-cross series, was the first muddy race of the season, and Sven Nys (Landbouwkrediet-Euphony) dealt best with the hard circumstances and left his last rivals behind in the fifth of seven laps.

“These are circumstances I like though the running sections cut hard into it. My back is bothering me a bit. It wasn’t optimal but good enough to win. The wind and the rain made it hard towards the end of the race,” Nys said, while shivering from the cold in the post-race interview zone.

Czech rider Martin Bina (Kwadro-Stannah) finished as a surprising runner-up at 17s from Nys, just ahead of Niels Albert (BKCP-Powerplus). The latter tried to respond to the acceleration from Nys but fell short. Some time later he was joined by Bina and in the last lap the Czech sped towards a well-deserved second place. Bina rode near the front of the race during the first laps and he collected ten bonus seconds at the intermediate sprint. As a result Bina is only 12s down on Nys in the time-based general classification while Albert trails the world champion by half a minute.

At the end of last season Bina won the snowy World Cup in Hoogerheide and this year he decided to reside in Belgium during the cyclo-cross campaign. The Czech has already plucked the fruit from that decision. “This was brown mud,” Bina laughed. “The result is a surprise although these technical and hard courses are my thing. It was very cold and very difficult but I’m feeling good. I only made one crash,” Bina said.

That crash happened during the fifth lap and it turned out to be the prelude of the attack from Nys. Nys rode ahead of Bina and seized the opportunity to accelerate while Albert was held up by the Czech’s tumble. Still, Albert felt he didn’t lose the race there. “I lost the race on the off-camber section in the first meadow. I always lost time there. It’s not that I’m going bad there but Sven [Nys] does it better. It was an exciting race but in front it’s still tight. There’s still the Koppenberg and Baal to come. These handful of seconds will not matter. Last year I won the series by more than seven minutes,” Albert said.

Much further back Belgian champion Klaas Vantornout (Sunweb-Napoleon Games) finished fourth, holding off Marcel Meisen (Telenet-Fidea) who rode a great last lap. US-champion Jonathan Page (Fuji) finished nineteenth, just ahead of Kevin Pauwels (Sunweb-Napoleon Games). Pauwels crashed early on in the race and never got back into contention. He’s already nearly five minutes down on Nys in the general classification. “During the first lap I was going alright but then I crashed early on and probably hurt my back. I might as well have stopped the race,” Pauwels said.

The next leg of the Bpost Bank cyclo-cross series is held on November 1 at the Koppenbergcross in Oudenaarde. Next week the riders head to Valkenburg for the first round of the UCI World Cup.

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