Mathieu van der Poel takes two out of two in Mol, Laurens Sweeck is happy that he can follow more than half cross

Mathieu Van der Poel was allowed to start from the first row of the grid, but this time he looked ahead in the wake of teammate Niels Vandeputte and the strong Crelan-Corendon duo Sweeck and Wyseure.

Iserbyt got stuck in the first lap behind a fall by Wout Janssen and had to catch up.

In the loose sand there appeared to be some dust on Van der Poel's sand technique, who had to get off the bike quickly and often had to make up a few spots afterwards. However, that worked very quickly.

On the fourth lap Van der Poel took a small lead before hitting the sand. This put pressure on the rest. Van der Haar had to pass. Only Sweeck was able to drive to Van der Poel's wheel in the sand. When passing the finish (at the start of the fifth lap), Sweeck and Van der Poel had an eleven second bonus on the rest.

In the fifth round, Van der Poel also started to put pressure on Sweeck. The faces spoke volumes: Sweeck with his mouth wide open, Van der Poel unperturbed as if he were on a coffee ride. Van der Poel slowly distanced himself from Sweeck at the waterline, but the Leuven native was able to get back on the wheel in the heavy sand strip. The elastic did not yet snap, but Sweeck was often able to come back to a conditionally superior Van der Poel with his sand technique? The rest was worth it: in one lap the duo had widened the gap to 32 seconds.

In the sixth round, Laurens Sweeck's elastic broke permanently. It was now important for him to hold on to second place. When crossing the finish line, MVDP had a gap of 25 seconds on Sweeck, the rest (Vanthourenhout, Vandeputte, Wyseure van der Haar, Kuhn and Orts) followed by more than a minute.

Mathieu van der Poel made it an excellent sand training. He did better with each pass.

In the meantime, the battle for third place was also gradually over. With two laps to go, Michael Vanthourenhout had a gap.

Mathieu van der Poel easily took his second victory in as many races this season. Laurens Sweeck eventually finished in more than a minute. It was MVDP's fourth victory in Mol, the previous one dating from four years ago.

The next appointment for Mathieu Van der Poel is Gavere on Boxing Day. If Wout van Aert recovers well from his stomach flu, we will have a first match in Loenhout a day later, Friday.