According to Wellens, van der Poel and van Aert are saying "f*ck you" to the UCI: "The World Cup is supposed to be about consistency, right?"

Van der Poel and Van Aert have, of course, started later and later in the field in recent years, sometimes due to injuries and often simply because of the road calendar. It has been more often December than earlier, and that also seems to be the case in 2025. “Wout doesn't know yet himself,” Angelo De Clercq said. According to him, it will definitely not be the European Championships from November 7 to 9.

But: “Wout will be doing more cyclo-cross than last year, he has already indicated that himself. The main question will be: will he ride the World Championships or not?” According to De Clercq, the Belgian federation will have to be patient. “If Wout wants to wait, then you give him the time to wait. Someone like him has a different status, so to speak. As far as I'm concerned, the only deadline is the registration deadline.”

However, the wait could also backfire, Wellens believes. He is referring to the World Cup calendar, which, unlike all other classifications, does not start until the end of November. The UCI wanted to try to tempt Van der Poel and Van Aert to compete in the World Cup in cyclo-cross. However, this did not happen in 2024/2025.

“What bothers me is that the UCI tailors the World Cup calendar to their program and crams all the races into December and January as much as possible. This makes it impossible for riders who compete in full seasons to combine the three rankings. The World Cup is a regularity criterion over the entire season, so why can't it start in October?”

"Pure cyclo-cross rider Michael Vanthourenhout won the World Cup classification last season,” emphasizes Wellens, who finds the UCI somewhat naive in this matter. According to him, the two greats of cyclo-cross have long since shown where their ambitions lie. “For two years now, Van Aert and Van der Poel have been saying 'f*ck you' to the UCI, but the UCI remains stubbornly angry.”

Because while van Aert may start the cyclo-cross season a little earlier, we really shouldn't expect van der Poel to start any earlier than sometime in December. That's what he did last season, with a few weeks of cyclo-cross and the World Championships to finish. With success, because van der Poel has seven world titles and can only become the record holder with an eighth.