2012 UCI Cyclo-Cross World Championships

The Koksijde crowd of sixty plus thousand would do anything to get close to the action

A group of CCH crossriders set of very early on sunday morning - or was it saturday night? - to travel over to Belgium to watch the 2012 Cyclo-Cross World Championships. The weather was bitterly cold and foggy but the excellent organisers had electronic signs up lighting the way to the venue from the motorway. A shuttle bus took us from the car into Kosijde - where the racing was taking place. The course wound its way around a military airport normally restricted to the public. Vast sections of the course consisted of very deep loose sand on steep hills which were energy sapping to walk on never mind race around.

The team arrives

We bumped into top women's Cross rider and GB champ' Helen Wyman before the race and wished her well.

Unfortunately Helen had a bad spill on the sand after leading the race but still managed to finish strongly in 13th place. Check here for the photos of Helen's deep rims disappearing in the sand.

At the finish line before racing started

Nikki Harris from GB on her way to an excellent sixth place

The women's race was pretty closely contested with not much separating the leading six riders however the amazing Marianne Vos eventually pulled away for the win - full report here.

Desperate warming up measure were called for...

With a long wait between the races we took to dune jumping to keep warm followed by Beers and frites. By now the massive crowd was in full swinging and singing party mode as they anticpated a home victory.

The Belgium crowd were treated to a masterclass by their riders who cleaned up on their home sand.

Afterwards we met up with USA rider Jeremy Powers and were filmed with him so check out his programme Behind the Barriers here to see if we turn up on it.

Jeremy Powers tries out for CCH - Harry's being filmed by the guy at the back  for J-Pows series.

They were not to be disappointed as the Belgium team rode the course like a team time trial eventually securing the top seven places. The world championship was won deservingly by Niels Albert  who put ten seconds into his rivals each lap coming home nearly half a minute up on his team mates he must have been sat up for the lsat half a lap.