There are solely three occasions left on the GCN+ broadcast calendar within the US and 6 within the UK earlier than the streaming service shuts down for good, however this weekend’s Superprestige spherical in Growth goes to supply up an ‘epic’ wintry spectacle.
Temperatures will dip under freezing in a single day, and the grounds, which have been soaked by rain prior to now few weeks, will thaw by race time, making for treacherous circumstances and thrilling racing.
Former World Champion Erwin Vervecken is worried riders may expose themselves to hypothermia.
“When this can be very chilly and freezing, you are driving on a frozen floor. That is not too unhealthy, as a result of as a cyclocross rider, you’ll be able to defend your self towards the chilly by carrying a number of layers,” stated Vervecken to Sporza.
“But when it freezes at evening and the temperatures through the day are simply above freezing, you get hellish circumstances. Riders get muddy whereas it’s already chilly – you can not defend your self towards that and so you will get hypothermia.”
Vervecken was the designer of the World Cup course in Namur in 2019, reversing the traditional route however the race ended up in heavy, ice-cold rain with mud as much as riders’ axles. Eli Iserbyt dropped out with hypothermia and then-World Cup chief Toon Aerts crashed and fractured a rib.
Adrie van der Poel, father of race winner Mathieu, criticized the course, saying, “Nothing they’ve introduced in added any worth. It is simply harmful, in search of sensation and has nothing to do with cyclo-cross.”
Iserbyt leads the Superprestige sequence after profitable the rounds in Overijse, Ruddervoorde and Niel with a 20-point lead over Laurens Sweeck. Ceylin del Carmen Alvarado leads the ladies’s sequence after a trio of wins within the final three rounds, most just lately in Merksplas.
Riders shall be battling by the chilly and moist circumstances on Saturday with the ladies’s race broadcast beginning at 1:30 pm CET/7:30 am EST and the boys’s at 3 pm/9 am.
The opposite remaining cyclocross races you’ll be able to watch within the US earlier than GCN+ shuts down are the boys’s and girls’s races at Actual Cross in Essen, the place Wout van Aert will make his off-road debut for the season, and the boys’s and girls’s race on the X2O Trofee Herentals, the place Tom Pidcock stars his schedule.
Within the UK, followers will be capable of watch the three aforementioned occasions obtainable within the US alongside the boys’s and girls’s races at World Cup rounds in Flamanville, Val di Sole and Namur on December 17.
Learn the way to observe in your space in our annual cyclocross information.