He stopped the superstar during the race, took a picture with him and let him win. But Van der Poel is taking the whole situation in stride

The cyclocross season, which will culminate in February with the World Championships in the South Bohemian town of Tabor, should be exciting. Before the world championship, exactly six duels between two giants of world cycling – Dutchman Mathieu Van der Poel and Belgian Wout van der Aert – were scheduled. But everything is different.

In the three races when the two “young greats” of world cycling clashed, the Dutchman Van der Poel from the professional Alpecin stable won each time and leads the Gavere 3:0 after the races over the Belgian Wout van Aert. Not even Britain’s Tom Pidcock was involved in the battle for victory, having already made it clear that his British professional stable Ineos Grenadiers is counting on him for road cycling and the Tour de France rather than cyclocross racing.

But that doesn’t mean that professional cyclocross fans aren’t having fun. It was at the last World Cup race in the town of Gavere in East Flanders, Belgium, that unsung Costa Rican rider Felipe Nystrom provided a rarity. He was enjoying the cheers of the noisy Belgian, especially Flemish, fans during the Gavere race when he suddenly almost derailed the eventual sovereign winner – Dutchman Mathieu van der Poel.

Dutchman Van der Poel went on to take another sovereign victory, overtaking the forty-one-year-old Felipe Nystrom by a full lap. The Costa Rican lost his racing judgement, stopped Dutch superstar Van der Poel and had his picture taken with him by the photographers present!

Mathie Van der Poel allowed himself to be photographed with the Costa Rican cyclist and went on to take a solo win unchallenged ahead of his rivals from the “so-called big three” Wout van Aert and Tom Pidcock, but Nystrom was still devastated after the unfortunate incident: “I was in his way. I feel terrible. It was a thousand percent my fault what happened there. I’m afraid Mathieu might have slowed down because of me.” Van der Poel may have slowed down, but it didn’t stop him from going on to another victory!

The Costa Rican later expressed regret over the incident, which made headlines, and not only in Belgium. “I wish I could look Mathieu in the eye and tell him how sorry I am for holding him back,” said Nystrom, who finished 74th in Gavere last time out, adding that he would stop racing cyclo-cross after the high-profile incident.

But Van der Poel showed the cycling world that he is not only a great racer but also a human being: ” A popular Costa Rican shouldn’t take it so hard.” And he encouraged Nystrom to keep going until the world championships in February in Tabor, South Bohemia. “I wasn’t angry with him,” said Van der Poel, for whom the incident was the only setback as he cruised to another dominant victory ahead of “the rest of the big three”.

“I know Felipe Nystrom’s story and I sympathize with him,” Van der Poel said, adding, ” I originally thought he was going to stop me to let me pass, but suddenly he wanted to take a picture. I took a picture with him and drove to the finish line for another victory.”

Source: Gavere, Velonews, Sporza