Van der Poel wraps up the World Cup

For the first time Mathieu van der Poel (Netherlands) won the GP Adrie van der Poel in Hoogerheide, the race organized by his legendary father.

The race was also the final round of the UCI World Cup for juniors, and Van der Poel launched a long solo effort in which he held off a surprisingly strong Anthony Turgis (France) to complete a clean sweep of the World Cups and take his 16th consecutive victory of the season. Another French rider, Quentin Jauregui (France) completed the podium.

Despite being a first-year junior, Van Der Poel – who only turned 17 three days earlier – has won all but three of the UCI junior races this season, but the home soil win was icing on the cake.

"It's really special to win here. My dad organizes this event so I gave it my best. It's the first time because last year I was out with a broken collarbone," Van der Poel said.

Late in the first lap Van der Poel surged forward in company of Turgis and Jauregui. They soon found out it wasn't possible to keep up with the unleashed Dutchman and were joined by Wout Van Aert (Belgium). The trio surprisingly managed to stay within a reasonable distance from Van der Poel after two laps of racing. Halfway through the race that changed, as the gap grew up to nearly twenty seconds with Silvio Herklotz (Germany) being the sole chaser at short distance.

Then a turnaround happened and Turgis quickly moved back up towards Van der Poel. With two more laps to go Turgis was only seven seconds down on the leader. "I think I started to ride a bit too defensively," Van der Poel said. "Once he started to gain ground on me it's a bit stressful because you here everybody shouting warnings and time gaps. From the penultimate lap on I rode much more aggressive and that worked out well."

Turgis was quickly set back to twenty seconds and that concluded the battle for the victory. The Frenchman didn't mind much about second place as he had the eye on the more important race from next week. "It's great to know that I can challenge him. I made a mistake that put me backwards and from there I took it easy to save energy for the world championships," Turgis told Cyclingnews.

In the battle for third place Jauregui sprinted just a little bit faster than Silvio Herklotz (Germany) and Wout Van Aert (Belgium), finishing half a minute behind the winner. Herklotz showed grit in the final laps and pushed Jauregui to the limit. "I didn't have a good start," Herklotz said. That was an understatement as the German champion got off the line outside the top 50

"The lights didn't work and I was caught by surprise; I didn't know what happened," Herklotz said. Somehow he managed to get back in the top 10 after only one lap. For the remainder of the race he rode shortly behind the first chase group but in the final lap he made contact. "In the sprint I didn't have much left also because I've been ill this week," Herklotz added.

In the overall standings of the World Cup the logical winner is Van der Poel with the maximum of 240 points. Jauregui is runner-up with 153 points, just ahead of compatriot Romain Seigle (France) who has 145 points.

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