A bittersweet day for Wout van Aert at the Belgian Gravel Championships: ‘It felt a bit surreal’

Wout van Aert started Sunday’s Belgian Gravel Championship as the clear favorite, but he ultimately had to settle for second place. The Belgian rider from Visma | Lease a Bike did so with great pleasure, knowing that his close friend and training partner Daan Soete had claimed the Belgian Championship title on his home turf.

Van Aert broke away with Soete 22 kilometers from the finish and seemed to be heading toward the finish line with his good friend, until Soete suddenly pulled away 3 kilometers from the finish. Van Aert appeared to glance at Soete’s front wheel several times, grimaced, and even started eating in the final kilometers, but what exactly happened?

"A great winner—he’s, of course, a very good friend of mine. But yeah, I wasted a lot of energy today. Toward the end, I was on the verge of cramping up. So… yeah, I really tried to work with him to get there together, and that cost me the win, but I’m not too disappointed,” he summed up in a nutshell during the flash interview.

Van Aert and Soete have been riding on the gravel paths where they raced on Sunday since they were young. “We ride on these roads and trails every day. And we literally grew up together, so it felt a bit surreal that everything just fell into place like that. So yeah, it was a very special day.”

"There were really a lot of people out there. I'd actually had that feeling for the past few weeks, because nobody talked to me about anything other than the BK Gravel. So I did realize that a lot of people were going to come out. And it certainly didn’t disappoint, so yeah, it was a blast,” says Van Aert.

"Of course, I would have liked to win it myself, but still, I was at least hoping that—yes—we could work together to control the race. And yes, there were a lot of strong riders at the start, so that wasn’t easy,” says Van Aert, whose final tune-up ahead of the Vuelta, which starts Saturday, went well. “From the Kempen to Monaco—that’s quite a difference,” he laughs.