Watch live: 2019 UCI Cyclocross World Championships in Bogense, Denmark
Tune in right here on Saturday and Sunday to catch the world's top elite, under-23 and junior racers battle for the rainbow stripes
The 2019 UCI Cyclocross World Championships run from Feb. 2 to 3 in Bogense, Denmark. First up on Saturday are the junior men, under-23 men and elite women. Sunday sees the under-23 women and elite men take to the exposed course that runs along the sea on the Danish island of Funen. It promises to be an exciting weekend of racing with unpredictable cold and damp weather forecast which could see some snow on the course over the weekend.
Wout van Aert is defending elite men’s champion having taken the title in three consecutive years while Sanne Cant will try and win her second consecutive women’s title. For van Aert, the nearly perfect Mathieu van der Poel will be chomping at the bit to take his second career title after a dry spell of three years since he won in 2015. World Cup winner Toon Aerts has also looked very dangerous. The elite women’s field is wide open with a half dozen or more legitimate contenders for the title including Marianne Vos and Lucinda Brand. Eli Iserbyt is defending under-23 champion but wonderkid Tom Pidcock will pose a tough challenger.
The Bogense course was previewed in 2018 as a round of the World Cup which van der Poel and Cant won respectively. It’s a generally fast course with long pedalling sections on either grass or pavement. There are a couple of flyovers, a set of planks and steep embankments which many ran at last year’s World Cup with the exception of one run by van der Poel who miraculously found a way to ride the entire thing without putting a foot down.
The course is very exposed to the elements and the sea with waves splashing onto the course last year. Temperatures on the weekend look chilly with a high of 2 C on Saturday with a chance of flurries and the same high on Sunday with a low of -2 C. There will be a relatively light wind in the high teens or two twenties if the forecast doesn’t change.
