Fortunately, MvdP appears to be perfectly on track for 2023. He‘s apparently already extremely strong.
I think his perfect season of 2022 pushed Wout to a completely new, higher level. Large extents, with big intensities, made this possible.
It‘s a very good sign that Mathieu seems to still be close to Wout, or equal. Mathieu‘s past year was a little bit more complicated, at times, so I‘m glad that also MvdP made this necessary step forward. It remains to be seen how Mathieu will manage the longer distances of the spring races, but I‘m optimistic. Apparently, he‘s been pain free for a while, and has an excellent preparation for 2023‘s road season.
WVA, MvdP and Pidcock now had and still have a winter program of quite many cyclocross races. The numbers of races have increased. They seem to rely of this kind of preparation, which suits them well.
So I think it‘s even more surprising that except of these three, and (not even) a handful of cross enthusiasts like Venturini, almost the complete male WT road peloton still ignores cross, and does not ride any cyclocross races. I did not expect this. In fact, after all the success of WVA, MvdP and Pidcock, I expected that more and more elite road pros would follow this example, and race cross as their winter preparation.
Apparently, I was wrong. Would be interesting to know why most avoid cyclocross races. Maybe fear of injuries?
I could imagine that racing cyclocross races as a preparation for the road season afterwards makes perfect sense when you are already a rider with excellent bike handling skills, like WVA, MvdP, Pidcock, Sagan or Pogacar. Then, you really benefit from these races, by gaining explosiveness and further improving technical skills. If you are, however, a mediocre bike handler, you lack self confidence on the cross parcours, tend to ride too carefully, and have no real benefit. Maybe that‘s the reason why so many still avoid cyclocross?…