Pauwels solos to Jaarmarktcross Niel win

Kevin Pauwels (Sunweb-Napoleon Games) continued his successful streak, taking his second consecutive victory of the season at the Jaarmarktcross in Niel. On Sunday, Pauwels dominated the third round of the Superprestige cyclo-cross series in Ruddervoorde and he again used his superior speed and bike skills to win alone. Both Wout Van Aert (Vastgoedservice Golden Palace) and Lars Van der Haar (Giant-Alpecin) did not take part in the mid-week race but Pauwels won comfortably, distancing his rivals in the second half of the race.

Pauwels finished 27 seconds ahead of a resurgent Tom Meeusen (Telenet-Fidea), with Sven Nys (Crelan-AA Drink) third after taking a tumble and making several errors on the technical parts of the course.

It initially did not look as though Pauwels was going to win. He was in tenth position and 20 seconds behind an aggressive Nys with Meeusen and Laurens Sweeck (Corendon-Kwadro) in pursuit. However, Nys crashed at speed on a grassy slope, with Sweeck also flying over his bars. Meeusen stayed up right but his gap was down to 11 seconds at the end of the lap.

As Nys tried to close the gap, Pauwels made his move and quickly opened a decisive lead in the final 30 minutes of the race. Nys lost any chance of success with further problems and the race was virtually over.

“I saw Sven make a mistake and that’s when I got through to the front,” Pauwels explained. "It was a long start on the road and I messed up a little bit. Then I lost a number of places on the technical sections and I was forced to chase. At the beginning of the race it didn’t work out so good. Then suddenly I saw that Sven had made a mistake in the sand. I pulled through, got a gap and from then it was about keeping going.”

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