How to Bet on Cyclo-Cross
Well. The road cycling season has ended and the only odds you'll be seeing on the sports books for a while are the first three Monuments of the year (Milan San - Remo, Tour of Flanders and Paris - Roubaix) along with the Tour de France 2024 betting odds.
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You may also notice however that every so often a cyclocross race pops up on the bookmakers.
This weekend is Overijse. Last weekend was Waterloo where Thibau Nys and Fem van Empel took the wins. You may be asking yourself two questions: is it worth it to bet on Cyclocross? And if it is - how should I go about it?
We offer up some brief analysis that might help. Let's first take a look at the men's odds for the weekend coming up
You'll notice there are a lot less name provided odds than a usual road cycling race. That's for two reasons. One is that the field of potential winners is drastically smaller, and two, the actual dataset the bookmakers have to work with is also smaller.
The thing about cyclocross is you'll have almost always the same players winning. Especially when cyclocross' big three: Matthieu van der Poel (MVDP), Wout van Aert (WVA) and Tom Pidcock arrive for the season.
Why don't the big three start racing along with everyone else? Typically they'll take a three week to a month off season after their road season prior to starting back up racing in cyclocross. You'll likely see them join the racing in mid November or the start of December. Wout van Aert's first race last season was on December 4th.
Once the big three join WVA or MVDP almost always either win or place second, so they have tremendously low odds. Pidcock is usually situated between 2.5-3 given that he can typically only win if something goes wrong for WVA or MVDP (a crash or a mechanical).
In the meantime however, there is some potential for value - 2.80 isn't completely devoid of a decent payout. The problem is that while Thibau Nys will likely win - it definitely isn't guaranteed. Iserbyt was just barely outkicked by him in the final stretch of the first race of the season in Beringer.
Especially as we get deeper into the season and the courses differ, other riders get stronger. Such as Laurens Sweeck, colloquially known as "Sandman" for his ability to navigate sand sections. If you feel comfortable with the course layout and the rider skillset you may be able to use that to your advantage.
Women
Alright, we've talked about the men, but what about the women's side of things? Well. It was a tad more competitive last year, with Fem van Empel (on the right in the image above) becoming injured after the Val Di Sole race in Italy. That led to Puck Pieterse being able to take the overall season in terms of points (situated in the middle in the image above).
However, if Fem van Empel is racing, she'll almost always win, and hence her 1.16 odds for the upcoming race in Overijse. Especially after Fem van Empel's first foray into the road season with Jumbo Visma this past year, she's looking incredibly strong and we don't expect her to be beat easily.
Getting Results
While you can get cyclocross results from Pro Cycling Stats (PCS) we find that First Cycling does a much better job at portraying the upcoming races and having the results available in an accessible format.
Should you bet?
We'd vote no. The problem is that the bookmakers only offer "Win Only" options on the categories, and given that there's such heavy favourites the payout is too low in our opinion. Potentially right now with the men there's some value, but it's debatable given the other sport options available at the moment.
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