Kevin Pauwels wins the UCI Cyclo-Cross World Cup First Round
Kevin Pauwels of Team Sunweb-Revor won the opening stage of the UCI Cyclo-cross World Cup First Round after his solo victory at the event.
The Belgian took a total time of 1 hour, 4 minutes and 58 seconds and occupied the top podium position, with Lars van der Haar of Tram Rabobank-Giant Off-Road Team finishing 14 seconds behind at the second position.
While comparing his victory to the last year’s win in Tabor, he noted that it was more difficult to find the top podium position this year. He found it pretty hard to overcome Niels this time round.
He praised his teammate Klaas Vantornout's efforts that helped him in extending his lead. “Thanks to Klaas, who played team tactics, I received a couple of metres. That was enough. It was hard but it worked out well," Pauwels cited.
Van der Haar was happy with his second place finish and noted that his goal was to finish amongst the top-5 but never thought that he could finish second.
"I can't believe it. I didn't expect it to go so fast. Last night I dreamed of a top-5 result, now I know that I can get somewhere in this sport".
"This course suits me to perfection. I'm going really well and I'm technically good so in these corners they couldn't drop me".
Niels Albert of Team BKCP-Powerplus fell further 2 seconds behind at the third position with Klaas Vantornout of Team Sunweb-Revor and Sven Nys of Team Landbouwkrediet-KDL occupying the fourth and the fifth spots.
"At first I thought that I would be able to join the large chase group behind the leaders and then aim for a last-lap effort. Once I bridged up to them I was able to continue. I had a very good day," said Nys.
Kevin Pauwels is now leading the Round 1 Overall Standings with a total number of 80 points in his back pocket with Lars van der Haar (70 points) and Niels Albert (65 points) securing the second and the third positions respectively.
Klaas Vantornout is five points behind at the fourth position while Sven Nys (55 points), Bart Aernouts (50 points), Jeremy Powers (48 points), Tom Meeusen (46 points), Twan van den Brand (44 points) and Simon Zahner (42 points) holds the next six spots respectively.
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