Van der Poel wins Superprestige Middelkerke

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Mathieu van der Poel (BKCP-Corendon) claimed the final Superprestige victory of the season in Middelkerke, soloing away on the slick, muddy course to beat Tom Meeusen (Telenet Fidea) and world champion Wout Van Aert (Crelan Vastgoedservice). Van Aert took out the overall classification for the series over Sven Nys (Crelan-AA Drink), who completed his final Superprestige race in fourth place.

The mishap-strewn race began with a dramatic mechanical to Laurens Sweeck, who snapped his chain in the start, and turned tense when Van Aert wrecked his derailleur on the second lap and was forced to run quite some distance to the pits for a fresh bike, dropping to 30th position.

The deficit put Nys in a strong position to unseat Van Aert in the overall standings - the veteran with 64 Superprestige wins and 13 final classification victories was riding well to maintain third, but could not withstand the comeback of the world champion.

Nys succumbed in the final lap, missing out on the race podium, but held onto second overall ahead of Lars van der Haar in the series.

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