2020 Dübendorf Cyclocross Worlds: The Surprising Story Told by Lap Times

Worlds weekend has come and gone. While Mathieu Van Der Poel will wear the rainbow bands for another year there were plenty of new World Champions taking the top step.

Ceylin del Carmen Alvarado led a Dutch sweep in the Elite Women. 2020 UCI Cyclocross World Championships, Dübendorf, Switzerland. © B. Hazen / Cyclocross Magazine

Now that the mud has settled in Dübendorf, I decided to dig into the numbers and see what lap times have to say about the race—something we have done before and the stat geeks and data crunchers have appreciated.

I put together tables of winning lap times for all six of the weekend’s races and noted the time differences between the previous and first laps.

I also looked at the fastest individual laps of the weekend and the most notable changes start to finish. You can view those tables at the bottom of this post.

Despite watching each race, I found the results pretty surprising.

A Few Observations:

-Annemarie Worst produced a faster best lap than Mathieu van der Poel at 8:52 vs 9:05, although in the van der Poel’s defense there was more mud on Sunday.

-Winner Mathieu van der Poel’s final two laps were slower than Junior Men’s Winner Thibau Nys’ last lap. Both racers competed in the muddy Sunday conditions. Of course, conditions got heavier, and van der Poel’s race went nearly 70 minutes long, but to slow down by nearly 20%? That’s quite a drop-off in pace.

-The fastest lap of the weekend was 7:47 by Ryan Kamp in Saturday’s Men’s U23 race on his third lap.

Benoist was one of the first to give chase after Kamp’s accelerations. Kamp would save his matches to set the fastest lap of the weekend on Lap Three. U23 Men. 2020 UCI Cyclocross World Championships, Dübendorf, Switzerland. © B. Hazen / Cyclocross Magazine

-Eli Iserbyt faded in lap four, falling from third to seventh. He lost a position each lap thereafter and finished 10th.

-Katie Compton started in 20th, but at the end of lap one was riding in seventh and turned in a negative split for lap two.

-Antoine Benoist faded in the last three laps, falling from the lead group to 1:16 back

-Defending World Champion Inge Van Der Heijden’s second lap was more than a minute longer than her first lap. She fell from 3rd to 6th place. While she was riding in 4th position at the end of lap three, she turned her slowest time of more than 13 minutes on the bell lap.

-Sunday’s races became notably slower in later laps, with the U23 Women and Elite Men slowing more than a minute by the last lap.

-The three-rider breakaway of the Elite Women’s race picked up the pace in the final lap with an 8:57 time, 17 seconds faster than lap four and almost matching lap one’s 8:52 pace.

-The U23 Men got faster about halfway through, besting the first lap time for the remainder of the race.

2020 UCI Cyclocross Worlds Elite Men Winner's Lap Times

2020 UCI Cyclocross Worlds Elite Women Winner's Lap Times

2020 UCI Cyclocross Worlds U23 Men Winner's Lap Times

2020 UCI Cyclocross Worlds U23 Women Winner's Lap Times

2020 UCI Cyclocross Worlds Junior Men Winner's Lap Times

2020 UCI Cyclocross Worlds Junior Women Winner's Lap Times