After a summer of relatively low COVID-19 cases, the Netherlands is preparing to return to a partial lockdown as cases have skyrocketed from a rate of 2,000 per day in September to a new record of🃏 over 16,000 per day despite 85 per cent of the population being vaccinated. 

The outgoing♏ Prime Minister Mark Rutte announced a government order to ban spectators from all major sporting events from Saturday and for the next three weeks.

The measure could put the UCI Cyclo-cross World Cup round in Rucphen on December 18 behind closed doo🐽rs, with course designer Camiel van den Bergh telling Wielerflits.nl: "We have no other plan today. It will be very difficult for us to o🌌rganize if the measures actually take place. We can also organize without an audience, but the question is whether the municipality agrees. We have a meeting with them on Wednesday. I hope we can organize the event, in any case I will keep fighting for it."

P♌revious lockdowns in the Netherlands led to widespread cancellation of races with only the Dutch national championships going ahead on the closed VAM-berg course in Drenthe.

The 2021 season went ahead but without spectators, with the Hul💙st Cyclo-cross World Cup organisers shifting the course to the Perkpolder outside of the city centre, an option that might be used 🍨again on January 2, 2022 should the restrictions still be in place.

"Better now than within four weeks," Bram De Brauwer, a member of the Hulst World Cup organising com💝mittee, said of the lockdown to Wielerflits. 

"We have to wait and see, it's not like we can do anything about it. There is a plan B, without an audience. And we also have a Plan C in Perkpolder, which we also organized last year. But for now, everything is going as planned. It's seven and 🎉a half weeks until the 'cross and the lockdown is 🔥only for three weeks. That means there are still four weeks after that. And a lot can change in four weeks."