Zdenek Stybar makes final preparations.

But he's willing to help out cyclo-cross legend Sven Nys with his race bib.

Stybar leads right after the start.

He was the first rider on the top of the big climb.

By the end of the first lap, reigning World Champion, Niels Albert took the lead.

An avid supporter.

Albert powered up on all climbs with admirable ease.

Dutch rider Gerben De Knegt tackles the same climb in his fourth lap.

Former World Champ, Erwin Vervecken spits. I have to be honest, I was just lucky catching the right moment, this was a result of a sequence of photos, the preceding and following photos were both out of focus. Sometimes you just get it right.

Sven Vanthourenhout and Thijs Al tackling a corner at rather high speed.

I can imagine more attractive mascots but then again, who am I to judge?

Though Stybar (20) wasn't able to keep Albert's pace, he was the strongest rider in the following pack. He pulled away gradually from the chasers' group and only Klass Vantournout (4) was able to match his speed.

Last year's overall World Cup winner, Sven Nys had a good start but dropped out after 5 laps, He didn't feel well, allegedly. His fans were equally sad.

Albert en route to his first World Cup victory in the season.

The public announcer's pulpit.

Stybar's 2nd place wasn't really in danger in the last lap.

Klaas Vantornhout came in third.

It was a fast and demanding course.

The World Cup leader.

And he also gets kisses.

Pavla Havlikova's pre-race concentration.

Daphny Van Den Brand (2) leads the charge after the start with Katherine Compton (8) and Pavla Havlikova (35) following closely.

By the end of the first lap, Compton (8) was already in the front and only Van Den Brand (2) was able keep up with her.

Linda Van Rijen approaches the depo area during her second lap.

Compton left the others way behind from the third lap and was racing at her own pace.

Sanne Van Passen

Caroline Mani (11) clearly suffered from the apparent heat and tried everything to enhance ventilation.

Daphny Van Den Brand held on to his second place. 

Annoyingly, I hadn't managed to count the number of laps properly so I was surprised when the announcer shouted "Last lap" and I started my mad dash towards the finish area but I didn't make it so I had to make do with some pre-finish photos.

This one came out quite nicely.

Watch his hand :)

Katie Compton answers questions during the press conference.

German rider, Ole Quast led the field after the start.

Germany's national champion, Sascha Weber arrived to the top of the first big climb's top first in the first lap.

Near the end of the first lap, soon-to-be-winner Robert Gavenda (46) and previous junior World Champ and World Cup winner, Tijmen Eising (27), who is spending his first year in U23.

Funny, how much bigger Michael Schweizer looked than Dutch rider, Lars Van Der Haar.

Gavenda (46) started to pull away from the rest of the field and Belgian Tom Meeusen (11) seemed to be able to keep up with him.

Gavenda runs up the hill.

And Meeusen follows closely.

By the penultimate lap, Meeusen wasn't able to keep up with pace Gavenda and Petrus dictated.

At the beginning of the last lap, Petrus had an insignificant lead on Gavenda, so final sprint appeared to be the most realistic end-game.

Cristian Cominelli (22) was chasing Arnaud Grand (43) for the bronze in the third lap.

The race ended with a final sprint indeed and Gavenda was the one who could celebrate, though as you can see, he didn't beat Petrus with a huge margin.

Eising finished 15th in his first U23 year, will see how he performs during the rest of the season.

Petrus didn't seem to be delighted - no wonder, he was defeated by less then a second.

Gavenda has it all: the gold and the girl.

Well, almost everything, the organizers managed to erect the Slovakian flag upside down.

Helen Wyman prepares for the race. The weather was surprisingly nice. I hated the sunshine then and there as I had to carry 30 lbs of gear but as I'm writing this, it's raining cats and dogs here, in London, so I'd rather have that sunshine now.

Gabby Day followed Helen a couple spots behind, so by the time she got to a certain point of the course, everything was really dusty, making a bit harder to catch real colours.

Though the morning was a bit chilly, when the race started at 11am, the sunshine had already warmed up the air. As there was no significant rain on the previous day, the entire course was dry and fast. 

Emilien Viennet and Mike Teunissen in sync on the hardest climb of the course.

Andrea Righettini manages to climb the ascent on his bike whilst other racers decide to run up the hill, even in the first lap.

A tricky off-camber section, which was tackled by most of the racers at amazing speed.

Everybody was fighting hard for good positions, even if they had to take a small detour.

There were long tarmac sections where riders could enjoy the leader's slipstream. In this case, the Dutch Emiel Dolfsma was kind enough to pull the train.

There was only one section, where the riders had to tackle some stairs and it wasn't particularly steep either - or at least they didn't LOOK steep. I reckon after 6 laps they didn't seem easy.

Well, to be honest, all the planning I had done on Saturday didn't really pay out, or at least not the way I expected. I miscalculated the amount of time necessary to get from the furthermost part of the course back to the start-finish area, so I missed the finish of the juniors and I could only snap this photo of this tired and dirty lot.

I reckon there's a UCI regulation that stipulates that organizers must provide high-pressured water for the depo area so bikes can be cleaned during the race, should a huge rainfall make things muddy. It is quite likely that the teams won't need them tomorrow - the weather report promises a hot and dry day.

This image was taken at the most distant part of the course (i.e. distant from the race center), it is a sharp turn, preceded with another sharp turn, which makes this section a bit tricky. This young Italian rider insisted on giving me a huge smile and I didn't protest.

Tijmen Eising, last year's World Champ and World Cup winner practices on the course.

This poor lad wanted to power up on the aforementioned climb but after a few meters his chain broke. If you think about it, he was quite lucky, had this happened during the race, it would have been much more annoying.

Everything is prepared for tomorrow's race. I love the organizers already, the distance between the finish line and the press center is roughly 10 meters - it's the closest press center I've ever seen and it just makes everybody's life soooo much easier. Thanks guys!

The organizers invited the journalists to a presentation but I had some time to kill so I tried to figure out what I should do tomorrow. I marked the spots on the map where I'd take pictures and tried to figure out the optimal schedule. Cyclo-cross races are different from their mountain bike counterparts as you have much less time to catch the action (40-50 mins as opposed to 2+ hours) and you have to be much more organized. As cyclo-cross races tend to have 6-9 laps, depending on the category, I created this little diagram, I assigned every spot to a certain lap. I've never done something like this before, it looks good, however, in the heat of the moment I might just throw the whole thing out and do something else. We'll see tomorrow whether it works or not.

Well, the presentation wasn't super-exciting. I mean it is possible that it was super-exciting but due to the low non-Italian speaking journalist penetration, they didn't say a word in English, apart from the UCI head-honcho, Peter Van Den Abeele. I have to admit, I didn't stay long.

It wasn't just me, however, who didn't understand a word from what was being said: Katie Compton was there as well, as one of the purpose of the presentation was to honor the champions. She was really nice when I tried to photograph her, she flashed a smile at my camera.