Mathieu van der Poel of Team Beobank-Corendon won the stage race of the Belgian Mountainbike Challenge 2017 (UCI S1). After winning the first two stages on his STEVENS Sonora SL the second place in the third and final stage was all he needed to keep the lead in the general classification.

Sören Nissen, also riding a Sonora SL, placed well in the stages to win second overall just ahead of current Marathon World Champion Thiago Ferreira from Portugal. Mathieu van der Poel laid the foundation to his overall victory on the first stage by finishing 51 seconds ahead of Nissen. And this despite the fact he had to deal with several difficulties. The cyclocross World Champion of 2015 suffered a flat tire just a couple of kilometres into the race while also still being a little stressed from a training camp with his team Beobank-Corendon in Spain that he just had returned from shortly before the race.

”The start didn’t go well. I still felt the stress of the training camp, and after the flat tire it took a lot of strength to get back to the top.” Eight kilometres before the finish – of 87km and 2,400 meters of elevation (54mls/7874ft) in total – he managed to separate from Sören Nissen and Belgian Champion Frans Claes.

The second stage from La Roche to Houffalize and back was the longest of the three with 100km and 3,000m of elevation gain (62mls/9843ft). Mathieu van der Poel defended his leader’s jersey with 1:32 minutes ahead of Hans Becking and Thiago Ferreira. Nissen  came in fifth.

On the final stage with only 30 seconds ahead of Ferreira it was all or nothing for van der Poel. ”I felt really good and stayed in the head group for most of the time.” Ferreira had to drop back 30km before the finish. So it was only Nissen, van der Poel and Dutch Marathon Champion Hans Beking to ride in front. ”I tried everything and went crazy fast for about 15km. But I couldn’t get rid of Mathieu.”

Both slowed down a little and Beking was able to catch up. Just before the end Nissen couldn’t keep up with the two Dutch in a technical descent. Hans Beking won the sprint for the finish line.
In the final general classification after three days with 260km and 8,000m of climbing (161.6mls/26,247ft) Mathieu van der Poel won in superior fashion ahead of Sören Nissen and Thiago Ferreira. ”The most important thing for me was to have been able to keep the second place overall, since I am the only rider on the podium who is not a current or former world champion,” Nissen concluded the result of the final stage.