Huub as Artz beats the heat and some big names at Dutch National Time Trial Championships

The men's Dutch time-trial championship was won on Wednesday evening by Huub Artz. In a boiling-hot Laren, the riders only set off after 7pm because of a code-orange heat warning, after which the Lotto-Intermarché rider was clearly the strongest. Dylan van Baarle and Sjoerd Bax finished second and third respectively, at what became a somewhat depleted national championship.

Beforehand, defending champion Daan Hoole was the big favourite, but the towering Decathlon CMA CGM rouleur did not come to defend his title after all. That opened up chances for the other rouleurs, who had to keep cool heads in a sweltering Laren. The organisers had pushed back the start times, turning it into an (early) evening time trial.

Hoole would certainly not be the only big name to be a no-show in Laren: Wilco Kelderman, Bart Lemmen and Menno Huising (all Visma | Lease a Bike), Maikel Zijlaard (Tudor) and Tim Marsman (Alpecin-Premier Tech) also pulled out late on. Even more chances for the remaining rouleurs, then!

Earlier in the afternoon, it was time for the women's time trial. Visma | Lease a Bike did excellent business there, with Daniek Hengeveld's victory making her the big surprise of the day. It got even better for the Dutch team, as Femke de Vries and Lieke Nooijen completed the podium. A Visma one-two-three.

In the men's race, just as had been the case earlier with the women, it took a while for a first benchmark time to drop. Thijs Wiggers, representing WV de Kannibaal, was the first rider to finish under 43 minutes. Around that moment, the last rider — Van Baarle — had also set off.

The Soudal Quick-Step rider had started pretty quickly. At the first time check he was the fastest, and by the second he had pulled further ahead. Bax — the second-fastest at that point, with the riders having covered 13.3 kilometres — was already conceding a little more than twenty seconds.

Also going hard out on the road (read: hard): Artz. At halfway, the Lotto-Intermarché rider was a full 33 seconds faster than Bax, and thus also seven seconds quicker than Van Baarle. That trend continued: at the fourth time check, too, Artz was the fastest. Van Baarle conceded 11 seconds there.

At the final time check, the curtain already seemed to have fallen for Van Baarle. After 31.3 kilometres, Artz was half a minute faster and heading for the red, white and blue. That gap held, and so Artz became the Dutch time-trial champion. Van Baarle was therefore the runner-up, while Bax took third at nearly a minute from the winner.