UCI Cyclo-cross World Cup – Zonhoven

The World Cup round in Zonhoven is a cyclocross race in Belgian Limburg, known for the Kuil, a sandpit the riders drop into every lap. The course lies on De Molenheide, a nature preserve of heathland with so much sand that little vegetation grows there. The race was a Superprestige round from 2010 to 2019 and was first run as a World Cup round in 2021. Long an October race, it has been held in late December or early January since 2023.

What is the Kuil in Zonhoven?

The Zonhoven cross is raced on De Molenheide, a nature preserve of heathland with so much sand that little vegetation can grow. The Kuil, the Pit in English, is its sandpit: the riders drop into loose sand, and for years they got out again on foot, up a sand wall. In December 2018 Corey Coogan Cisek, who finished 24th in the women’s race, wrote that the crowd in the Kuil roared at every crash, so the roar was constant. “There’s something to be said for knowing your crash landing will be soft,” she wrote.

In 2019 the lines that could be ridden through the sand were mostly 18 inches wide. For the race of January 8, 2023, the lap was redrawn so that the riders went down into the Kuil three times: straight after the start, again down the strip they had run up in earlier years, and a third time on a short slanting drop that stops before the bottom. The long run out of the Kuil was dropped. Before, said Chris Mannaerts, course manager for Flanders Classics, the riders were in the Kuil for about a minute and a half and then gone for four or five minutes.

How a race from 1958 became a World Cup round

Zonhoven’s cross goes back to 1958, when Firmin Van Kerrebroeck won the first of nine editions held in a row. After 1966 it disappeared from the calendar, and it did not return until 2005. The municipality ran the race in 2005 and 2006. By 2010 it was a round of the Superprestige, and that year, with the Kuil added to the course, spectators came to the Limburg town in large numbers.

Zonhoven stayed in the Superprestige through 2019. The 2020 race, which was to be the first in the World Cup, was not held: without income from spectators in the year of the pandemic the costs were too high. The first World Cup race in Zonhoven followed in October 2021, organized by Flanders Classics, which had taken over from Golazo that year. Since 2023 it has been raced around the turn of the year.

Mathieu van der Poel’s six wins in Zonhoven

Mathieu van der Poel won six times between 2016 and 2026: in 2016, 2017 and 2018, in both races of 2024, on January 7 and December 22, and on January 4, 2026. Sven Nys, who won five times across nine years, among them the first of the two races of 2010, on February 7, was for a long time the record holder in Zonhoven for the number of wins.

On October 15, 2017, Van der Poel sat around eighth wheel early on while Wout van Aert went clear at the front. By the end of the second lap he had cut Van Aert’s lead in half, and he caught him on the sandy rise after the 180-degree turn. At the start of the fourth lap he picked up the pace again, and Van Aert and the rest lost his wheel: he was eight seconds clear over the top of the sand wall and twenty at the end of the lap. He won by 22 seconds from Van Aert.

On January 8, 2023, the pace went up on the first descent into the Kuil, Van der Poel slid, and Van Aert took over at the front. Van der Poel was back with him as the third of eight laps began, slid again, and Van Aert rode the rest alone to win by 1 minute 23 seconds.

How the women’s race passed from Sanne Cant to Dutch riders in 2019

Daphny van den Brand won the women’s race in 2010 and Sanne van Paassen in 2011. Sanne Cant then won five times between 2012 and 2018, the last time in December 2018 with snow in the sandpit.

In December 2019 Cant rode the first pass through the Kuil with three Dutch riders around her: Ceylin del Carmen Alvarado, Inge van der Heijden and Annemarie Worst. On the third lap Worst and Alvarado attacked, and Cant dropped back. Van der Heijden and Alice Maria Arzuffi got back to the two, and four riders were together with two laps to go. On the lap before last Alvarado pressed on, Worst alone went with her, and at the bell the two had six seconds on three chasers. On the last lap they ran into lapped riders and, for a moment, into each other. Alvarado attacked after the sand, Worst followed, and Worst reached the line first. Cant finished sixth. Every women’s race in Zonhoven from that one through January 2026 was won by a Dutch rider: Worst, Denise Betsema in 2021, Shirin van Anrooij in 2023, Puck Pieterse in January 2024, and Alvarado in December 2024 and January 2026.