Van Aert, Van der Poel and Vanthourenhout: the Hoogerheide evidence

The UCI Cyclo-cross World Championships return to Hoogerheide, the Netherlands (3-5 February), where Wout van Aert won the Men Under 23 title ahead of Michael Vanthourenhout and Mathieu Van der Poel in 2014.

Wout van Aert remembers “everything” from 2 February 2014. The Belgian was only 19 years old, and glory was already calling him as he participated in the UCI Cyclo-cross World Championships in Hoogerheide. “I took my first UCI World title in the Under 23 category so of course it’s a special place for me,” Van Aert says nine years later as he gets ready to return to Hoogerheide for more rainbow battles at the beginning of February.

In the Netherlands, Van Aert will face rivals he’s been vying with for years… especially Michael Vanthourenhout and Mathieu Van der Poel, the runners-up who joined him on the Under 23 podium nine years ago. Since then, the trio has more than confirmed they were special talents on the verge of claiming countless victories and accolades at the highest level of their sport.

Stybar: “Mathieu was winning everything”

Indeed, the greatest names of cyclo-cross were watching these champions in the making very closely. “They were dominant already,” says Zdenek Stybar, who claimed his third Men Elite title the same year the young trio took the Under 23 honours. Speaking from Benidorm (Spain), where the Czech rider was participating in the penultimate round of the 2022-23 UCI Cyclo-cross World Cup, he recalled the impression they were making on the cyclo-cross world at a young age.

“Štyby” was particularly impressed by Van der Poel at the time, even though Van Aert came on top that day. “Mathieu was winning everything,” Stybar says. “On some races, his lap times were the same as the Elites’. The word was going around and it was like: ‘What is he doing? That’s amazing!’”

There was little room for doubt, the Czech explains: “We knew Mathieu was a huge talent and of course he had the name from Adrie (Van der Poel, his father – ed). And Wout also built up and they reached the same amazing level.”

Young and successful

Only a year after Van Aert’s victory in Hoogerheide, he and Van der Poel took over the Elite Worlds held in Tábor (Czech Republic): gold for Adrie’s son and silver for his longtime rival (“The first time I raced Mathieu, I was maybe 10 years old,” Van Aert also recalled in Spain). The two of them were barely 20 years old but they were already dominating their elders. At the same time, Michael Vanthourenhout took the rainbow stripes in the Men Under 23 category.

Stybar’s prophecy was coming true. And the following years gave it even more weight. Heading to Hoogerheide 2023, Van der Poel is chasing a fifth UCI Elite Cyclo-cross World Champion title and Van Aert a fourth. They’ve won every edition from 2015 until 2021 and Vanthourenhout squeezed in between them to take silver on the podium of the 2018 UCI Worlds.

References

The UCI Cyclo-cross World Cup also highlights Van der Poel and Van Aert’s incredible feats. This weekend in Benidorm, Van der Poel took his 32nd victory in a UCI Elite World Cup event, just ahead of Van Aert, who has 15 under his belt.

The flying Dutchman dominated the overall standings in 2017-18, with seven victories out of nine UCI World Cup rounds that season, while Van Aert took the other two. The Belgian star finished on top of the UCI Cyclo-cross World Cup in 2015-16, 2016-17 and 2020-21. And they’ve also claimed countless victories in National and Continental Championships.

The supremely gifted duo went on to make huge waves on the road (and in mountain bike events as well for Van der Poel) while Vanthourenhout became a reference in cyclo-cross events. He is the reigning Belgian and European Champion, set to make it to the overall podium of the UCI Cyclo-cross World Cup for the fourth season in a row.

They keep on amazing us… but they had warned us in Hoogerheide 2014.