To the relief of cyclocross fans, Mathieu van der Poel and Wout van Aert will both return to racing cyclocross over the coming weeks. The seven-time world champion will be seen in the field between eleven and thirteen times, while his Belgian rival will appear eight times. But how were these calendars put together?
Van Aert's coach Mathieu Heijboer told us that he had his protégé draft a proposal himself. They then approached the organizers with it, who assess whether they can offer a fair compensation in return. These fees have, by the way, not only for Van Aert and Van der Poel, but for years been determined by Erwin Vervecken, the former world champion who now works at the event organization agency Golazo.
"Actually, the appearance fees for Van Aert and Van der Poel have been set for several years now," said Vervecken. "There isn’t even any discussion about those fees anymore. We get told which cyclocross races they want to ride. And we take note. There’s really not much more to it. These are straightforward negotiations, and money doesn’t make a big difference. Of course, we have to pay them, but there’s no hard bargaining or ‘package deals’ involved. You shouldn’t imagine more than that."
So why do Van Aert and Van der Poel each choose their own specific cyclo-cross events? "They skip certain races and willingly pick others. That comes down to preferences. I know, for instance, that Wout likes to be home for New Year’s Eve, so he skips Baal. Paul Herygers said he noticed Wout has mainly selected some sand courses, but I see more of a mix, including some ‘mudder’ races."
"On the other hand, they both do Hofstade now, which is a new race on the circuit. I can imagine that after being on the circuit for several years, it’s nice to experience a new race on a course you’ve never ridden before. Every race has its own strengths and possible drawbacks. They can’t race everywhere," Vervecken concluded.
The distribution between races organized by Flanders Classics (World Cup and Superprestige) and Golazo (X2O Trophy, Exact Cross, and National Championships) is also fairly balanced between the two. "We don’t want to set that against each other, but the fact is we’re happy they ride some of our races. If, as an organizer, you have to watch from the sidelines during that period with neither of them at the start, that’s a big loss."
