Wout van Aert won his second cyclocross world championship on treads taken from a set of green Michelin Mud tyres. What was unusual was that, at the time, these tyres hadn’t been made for 15 years. His manager had a collection left maturing in his basement since 2002, bringing them out for van Aert to use on the thawing snowy, rocky conditions of the 2017 parcours.
Cyclocross racers obsess about tyre choice; peer inside their trailers and there are rows of wheels shod with different tyres to match the course conditions.
