Van Aert vs Van der Poel: a look at the 7 times they have faced each other in a CX World Championship

The 2023 Cyclocross World Championships next weekend in the Dutch town of Hoogerheide, will be the last duel between the two great dominators of the category. Mathieu Van der Poel and Wout Van Aert will face each other once again in a rivalry that has been giving us spectacular races for more than a decade.

Duel of titans in the 2023 Cyclo-cross World Championships

With the permission of other great names in the mud discipline, there is no doubt that when the history books look back on this era we are living in, they will have to dedicate a special chapter to the rivalry between Wout Van Aaert and Mathieu Van der Poel on the cyclo-cross circuits. A healthy fight if we take into account the respect that these intimate enemies have for each other in their declarations.

The next great duel to come, the finale of a 2022-23 cyclocross season, where both have dominated with an iron fist the races in which they have participated, marking sidereal differences with the rest, will take place at the CX World Championships, which will put the icing on the cake of this exciting campaign.

Trying to make a prediction is difficult in a discipline so intense and marked by details, although, based on the results of this season, perhaps the odds are slightly in favour of Wout Van Aert, who has shown greater consistency. However, Van der Poel's recent race wins indicate that the Belgian will not have an easy task to beat Poulidor's grandson.

Going back to their previous meetings in the World Cyclocross Championships, we can see that the statistics in the top category, where they have met 7 times since the CX World Championships in Tabor in 2015, before they had already met in the junior category in 2012, a race that went to Van der Poel's side.

The statistics in this case are also in favour of Mathieu Van der Poel, who has won on 4 of the 7 occasions on which the two riders have fought for the rainbow jersey, the last of them in 2021, as both were absent from the Fayetteville event last year, forgoing the long journey to the United States so as not to jeopardise their preparation for the road classics campaign.

Tabor 2015, the first confrontation between the two, in the end was not such. Wout Van Aert's several chain failures conditioned his race so Mathieu Van der Poel just had to do his race to win, at only 20 years old, his first CX World Championship. Despite the mechanical incidents, the Belgian's race was also remarkable, and he managed to overcome them and climb up to the second step of the podium.

The following year the duel was repeated in the 2016 Cyclo-cross World Championship, this time on the fast Zolder circuit. A race in which both riders set the pace from the start until a clash between them caused them to lose many places. It was Wout Van Aert who managed to come back successfully, catching Lars Van der Haar to open his account of rainbow jerseys.

A victory that he repeated at the 2017 CX World Championship in Luxembourg. On this occasion, the race was once again marked by incidents. Mathieu Van der Poel suffered four flat tyre punctures, the last one far from the pits. Van Aert, who also suffered a puncture, on the other hand, was lucky enough to be near the bike change point. In any case, proof of the superiority of both, Van der Poel followed the Herentals rider to the second place on the podium.

In 2018 the World Cyclocross Championship moved to Valkenburg, on a circuit that was extremely muddy. A race of survival in which Wout Van Aert managed to certify a fantastic hat-trick with a tremendous superiority from the early stages of the race.

However, with the exception of the 2022 edition when both were absent, an occasion that Thomas Pidcock did not let pass, the domination of the CX World Championship has gone to Mathieu Van der Poel, who managed to win three consecutive titles in 2019, 2020 and 2021.

In 2019 in the Danish town of Bogense he had to fight to the maximum after seeing how Van Aert and Toon Aerts managed to close the gap every time he accelerated to try to break the race and go solo.

Something he did achieve in 2020 in Switzerland where he was unchallenged and stood out from the first lap. Finally, in 2021 he broke the tie in the duels between the two riders with a victory on the beautiful Ostend circuit that left us with spectacular photos of both fighting on the sand, a surface on which Van der Poel defends himself like a fish in water and on which he asserted his superiority despite suffering a crash at the start of the race.

Who's your favourite for Sunday, will Wout Van Aert break the duel count or will Mathieu Van der Poel open the gap? Leave us your prediction on our social networks!