Although the \u2018cross season feels like it just began, the first major championship showdown of the cyclocross season brings a familiar rivalry to Zeddam, with Belgium and the Netherlands supplying most of the men\u2019s contenders. It\u2019s been a minute since a big race was been in Zeddam\u2013 20 years ago, back in 2006, when it hosted the worlds. But it\u2019s a pretty rad course, with plenty of running. The course, featuring a newly restored staircase of around 100 steps, should provide a proper test for those who love to run. It was designed by none other than world champ Erwin Vervecken, who won his final world championships of three in Zeddam.<\/p>\n
The men\u2019s contenders<\/p>\n
2024 Euro champ Thibau Nys arrives as the clear favourite after a big dub at Koppenbergcross, but Michael Vanthourenhout is definitely a contender for one of the nicest championship jerseys in cycling, the blue white and gold kit of Euro champ. Vanthourenhout has won it twice before.<\/p>\n
And Nys? The Belgian has a knack for being on form right about now, having claimed the European title twice. The Dutch will have home support behind Joris Nieuwenhuis, who knows the local course particularly well. There\u2019s also guys like Pim Ronhaar and Niels Vandeputte who could be up there. British champ Cameron Mason has been riding well and would be stoked to trade his white, red and blue national champs jersey for the Euro one, one would think.<\/p>\n
Women\u2019s favourites<\/p>\n
As far as the women, Lucinda Brand comes in as the woman to beat. The world champion has been on a tear this season, taking dubs at the Koppenbergcross, Dendermonde, Ardooie and Overijse. There\u2019s also riders like Luxembourg\u2019s Marie Schreiber to mark as a contender. Don\u2019t forget Italy\u2019s Sara Casasola and France\u2019s Amandine. The Netherlands brings a super-strong team\u2013not just Brand. Inge van der Heijden, Aniek van Alphen, Ceylin del Carmen Alvarado and Fem van Empel add plenty of firepower.<\/p>\n
The women\u2019s is race Saturday, and the men race Sunday. It\u2019s not on Flobiles.com<\/a>, but if you need a fix Thursday the second round of the Superprestige is being broadcast.<\/a><\/p>\n And although there are (obvi) no Canucks racing, you should expect to see riders like new national champs Tyler Clark and Sidney McGill racing across the pond soon. (Among others!)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Although the \u2018cross season feels like it just began, the first major championship showdown of the cyclocross season…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":959272,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[327634,49,48,635,82],"class_list":["post-959271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-2026-european-cyclocross-championships","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cycling","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/959271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=959271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/959271\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/959272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=959271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=959271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=959271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}