World Championships Cyclocross 2007 – U23 Men
Lars Boom wins gold in Hooglede-Gits (Belgium) in a one man show dominating the race to take the rainbow jersey! Niels Albert of Belgium and Romain Villa of France take silver and bronze medals.

By Bart Hazen

At 14:30 the U23 riders started for their World Championships race in Hooglede-Gits. The two bog favorites for the race are Lars Boom (The Netherlands) and Niels Albert (Belgium). Outsiders are Romain Villa (France), Zdenek Stybar (Czech-Republic), Lukas Kloucek (Czech-Republic) and Rafael Visinelli (Italy). Lars Boom and Zdenek Stybar had the best start.

During the first lap USA riders Jamey Driscoll and Daniel Neyens were involved in a crash. Boom was making the race very hard and one by one riders were dropped. After one lap of racing we had five leaders with Boom, Albert, Villa, Stybar and Visinelli.

Then on the long climb, in the second lap, before the sand section Boom attacked again, Albert made a little mistake, and the young Dutch rider was alone. Nobody could follow the attack. Boom extended his lead little by little. Albert gave his best but he was not good enough to beat Boom.

Due to the high speed, Boom lapped many riders, winning the race after a one-man show with a 1.22 lead on Niels Albert and 1.44 on the French rider Romain Villa. 2005 & 2006 World Champion Zdenek Stybar finished fourth, and German Philipp Walsleben fifth.

Lars Boom declared after the race that he was happy to be World Champion. He expected that he had a really big chance to win but didn’t expect to do that with a 1.22 lead on Albert. “I saw that Albert made some mistakes and I made my advantage of that to attack”. Further he announced that he will do more cyclocross races next season and that this was his last year in the U23 category. Next cross season he will make the step to the Elite category. His goal to become World Champion beating the recently unbeatable Sven Nys.

Result (top 20):
1 Lars Boom (Ned) 53.53
2 Niels Albert (Bel) 1.22
3 Romain Villa (Fra) 1.44
4 Zdenek Stybar (Cze) 2.30
5 Philipp Walsleben (Ger)
6 Lukas Kloucek (Cze)
7 Jonathan Lopez (Fra)
8 Rob Peeters (Bel)
9 Rafael Visinelli (Ita)
10 Ricardo Van Der Velde (Ned)
11 Finn Heitmann (Ger)
12 Aurelien Duval (Fra)
13 Robert Gavenda (Svk)
14 Eddy Van Ijzendoorn (Ned)
15 Tom Van Den Bosch (Bel)
16 Ian Field (GBr)
17 Quentin Bertholet (Bel)
18 Frantisek Kloucek (Cze)
19 Davide Malacarne (Ita)
20 Thijs Van Amerongen (Ned)