In the sixth of seven World Cup races in Lignières-en-Berry, France, he won souvereignly, so souvereignly that he did a wheelie at the finish line. Wout van Aert (13 seconds behind van der Poel) won the long open fight for second place against Lars van der Haar (17 seconds).

In the first half of the race Laurens Sweeck of team ERA-Murprotec led the field for quite a while on his STEVENS Super Prestige. He had the best start and managed to get a few seconds ahead of the others for some time. In the course of the race he had to reduce speed, however, but won the duel for sixth place against Sven Nys.

It could have been better by one or two places, said Laurens who was not entirely happy with his sixth place. But problems with his pedals led to Kevin Pauwels and Tom Meeusen overtaking him on the muddy course and finishing ahead of him by a few seconds. With this result Sweeck also secured the sixth place in the overall results ahead of Mathieu van der Poel who missed out on the first races due to a knee injury.

For Mathieu van der Poel of BKCP-Corendon the race ran quite the opposite way. The World Champion had a bad start and was on 15. position at the beginning. But as the leaders slowed down a bit on the fast and technical circuit after attacks of Sweeck and van der Haar, van der Poel could catch up on the field in the second half of the race.

Shortly after he attacked himself, van der Haar and van Aert (who made a riding error) could not keep up with him. The new and reigning Dutch Champion showed that he was still in good form by increasing his lead from round to round so that he could afford doing a wheelie in front of his grandfather Raymond Poulidor, the “eternal second” of Tour de France, winner of Milan-San Remo and Vuelta.

It was the third World Cup victory in a row for van der Poel and the fourth victory in a row after the Dutch Championship and races in Zonnebeke and Otegem.

Sanne Cant of Enertherm-BKCP won even more souvereignly with a start-finish victory. However, she said after the race: “This was more difficult today than it may have looked. On such a course you race against yourself the whole time, especially when you are alone in the lead”, said the European and Belgian Champion. Until the middle of the race Ellen van Loy, Cants fiercest competitor in the past few races, could keep up with her. Eva Lechner from Italy finished third.
Thanks to this result, Cant managed to increase her lead in the World Cup before the last race: “I am in the lead, but I know that there remains a lot to do in the last race.” The races can be re-watched on UCI's YouTube channel.