Be Sure to Drink Your Pickle Juice
A thrilling cyclocross race leads to the weirdest editorial decision of the 2020s, and an American hero cramps up at a bad time.
Let’s start with cyclocross. It’s a bit unusual, but road cycling’s shorter, bumpier cousin had an odd week. The penultimate UCI World Cup race of the year took place on Saturday in Benidorm, Spain,1 on a beautiful, sandy course that featured a steep, paved climb made for big overtaking moves and incredible drone shots of same.
TV production logistics for a road race are necessarily a bit more complicated, but tell me you wouldn’t kill for a drone shot of the Mur de Huy. I’m not sure why broadcasters of big races haven’t switched from helicopters—which are big and disruptive and expensive—to drones.
That’s not important. The important thing is that Mathieu van der Poel, who’d won his previous 10 races, just up and ran into a fucking telephone pole on the second-to-last lap of the race. That left Wout van Aert to duke it out with fellow Belgian Michael Vanthourenhout for the win with one lap to go. And sure enough, they got to that last climb and van Aert just smoked him.
Having pulled out a huge gap with just a few corners to go, van Aert decided to dismount and jump over an obstacle he’d bunny-hopped on previous laps.2 While swinging his leg back over his bike, van Aert accidentally kicked his seat, and did so with enough force to knock the cushion clean off the mounting post. He was able to get back on the horse and hold off Vanthourenhout for the win, but he did so with a pointy metal implement balanced precariously close to his perineum.
Now, I’m not particularly squeamish or precious—and you can tell because I just put the word “perineum” before the break—but I’m still a ways from understanding the response by the E3 Saxo Bank Classic, a Flemish World Tour classic race.