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Watch: Mathieu van der Poel puts cyclocross skills to use cutting corner in road race

Dutchman avoids disciplinary measures for taking short cut at Belgium one-day race.

vanderpoel
June 19, 2018
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Cyclocross phemon Mathieu van der Poel is spreading himself across a diverse calendar of races in 2018 from a dominant cyclocross season to showing extreme competence on the World Cup XC circuit. In addition to all that, van der Poel has been doing some road racing including Dwars door het Hageland on Friday. In that race, the 23-year-old Dutchman used an unusual measure to get back into contact with the peloton.

Van der Poel was lucky to escape any disciplinary measures during the race for bunny hopping onto a sidewalk to make the corner wider before cutting through a corner across some grass at the race. Riders are not supposed to deviate from the course especially to gain an unfair advantage according to UCI rules.

That didn’t prevent the quick thinking van der Poel from spotting a shortcut and using the opportunity to get back into the peloton dodging road signs and riding on the grass in order to do so.

Ultimate, van der Poel would be a DNF in the event as Latvian Krists Neilands of the Israel Cycling Academy won ahead of Elia Viviani.