Wout Van Aert (Jumbo-Visma) came back from a freak mechanical incident to take his first cyclocross victory of the season at the inaugural Dublin World Cup in Ireland.
The 28-year-old Belgian was leading group of six riders in the second half of the race when a mechanic's towel became jammed in his rear derailleur while passing the outside of the pit area.
It sparked a moment of panic in the race and saw van Aert lose contact with his rivals. Yet the five-time cyclocross world champion kept calm, ran back down the course and into the pits to change his bike losing.
Van Aert lost 16 seconds but charged back towards the leading group before launched a stinging attack in the sand pit section, going on to win by 14 seconds.
“I rode the course extremely on the right side next to the mechanics,” said Van Aert explaining the incident.
“By accident I grabbed the towel of the mechanics and it slipped in my wheel so the derailleur broke off. I think I was lucky that I saw it immediately and could still run back to take a fresh bike.
“I kept quite calm, I saw in the front they were not really full on attacking so quite soon after I saw I still had a chance. It’s always important to keep calm in ‘cross as anything can happen.
“Most of the time I’m always racing until the line and today that was my plan, luckily I didn’t give up.”
Van Aert and rival Tom Pidcock (Ineos Grenadiers) both got slower starts and had to battle from outside the top 10 into the leading group. However, the WorldTour road riders soon moved forward, with Pidcock first attempting to break a leading group of six riders up.
Van Aert, who finished second at the Antwerp World Cup round last week, also made small errors on the slippery course. However, in the latter stages the Belgian powered back from his mechanical and then left his rivals to take his first cyclocross victory since January.
Laurens Sweeck (Crelan-Fristads) tried in vain to stay with Van Aert eventually finishing second 14 seconds behind while Pidcock fought to take third.
“In the start I missed a little bit and was fighting with the others to keep positioning and struggling with the new conditions of the course,” Van Aert added.
“I almost crashed once but at the time I felt better than the mechanical, I had some obstacles in the first part. Luckily the race was so hard that I could still come back.”
The icy conditions in the morning during recon turned to mud ahead of the elite men’s race and Van Aert said the changing nature of the Dublin course made it difficult.
The Belgian also complimented the 8,000-strong Dublin crowd who flocked to the first World Cup held in Ireland.
Van Aert added: “It was a really pleasant experience, a lot of people came out which we don’t always see when we go abroad with the World Cup so that’s something really good.
“The course was changing minute to minute today so that’s one of the hardest day in cyclocross when you have to adapt to the conditions. It was nice.”
