The final cyclocross showdown of the season between Mathieu van der Pol and Wout van Aert will take place in front of a near sold-out crowd at the Benidorm World Cup on Sunday, January 21.

Tickets for the 2023 event sold out before the event, with only a few hundred tickets available on the day of the event; large crowds are expected for 2024, and according to TuttoBici, the same amount (10,000 tickets) have already been sold, with an additional 15,000 tickets to be made available.

Benidorm's important geographic and calendar position will attract some of the sport's biggest stars from its January training camp.

Cyclocross has grown successfully in Spain outside of the typically restrictive calendars of Belgium and the Netherlands, where the discipline is most popular.

The attention of the so-called "big three" has certainly had an impact, as Tom Pidcock (Ineos Grenadiers) is on the start list along with Van Aert and Van der Pol, despite missing part of the cyclocross program during the vacations.

In last year's Benidorm race, Van Aert and Van der Pol traded the lead throughout the opening lap; in 2023, Van Aert pushed his longtime rival to the limit and nearly crashed in an attempt to win Benidorm.

This season, however, the Dutch rider has a greater advantage and it looks unlikely to be a similarly close battle.

The World Champion achieved a perfect 10 in the final round in Sonnhofen. Van der Pol's victories were not close either, often pulling away from the rest of the field on the opening lap and not being seen until the final lap.

Van der Pol has been training in Spain for the past few weeks and on Wednesday was seen riding with Tadej Pogachar and UAE Team Emirates teammates Jan Kristen and Pavel Sivakov.

Men's World Cup leader Eli Iserbit (Pauwels Sausen Bingor) will be on the Costa Blanca to defend his overall lead from the Baloise Trek Lions trio of Joris Nieuwenhuys, Pim Lonhar and Lars van der Haar. Participation.

Iserbyt is just 25, 35, and 40 points behind their respective pursuers, but he should be confident of this victory after winning the Belgian national title last weekend.

The Benidorm is the final round of the World Cup, with the Vogelheide finale on the 28th. The maximum number of points for a win is 40.

A strong women's field will take to the Spanish sands, including last year's Benidorm winner Femme van Empel, Pak Peterse, Lucinda Brand, and Ceylin del Carmen Alvarado.

The quartet has won all but one of the 12 World Cup races, the other being the snowy Val di Sole, won by Mannon Bakker. Alvarado leads the overall World Cup standings by 52 points over Pieterse.

"Femme Van Empel came to Benidorm last year and impressed us a lot.

"She, Alvarado, and Pieterse are the three biggest cyclocross world champions in the women's field and will be in our race. We also have the big three in the men's field, which shows how egalitarian our race is.

Pieterse is confident, having won four of the last five races, but lost to Lucinda Brand in the Dutch National Championships.

Van Empel has spent the past two weeks at the Vimalise a Bike training camp and resting to recover from a minor knee injury suffered in the previous round, but the world champion is back to his best for his rainbow jersey defense on February 3 in Tabor. We expect the world champion to be back to his best for his defense of the Rainbow Jersey on February 3 in Tabor.