Belgium's men didn't have it all their own way at the Road World Championships this year as Remco Evenepoel and Wout van Aert missed out on the road race medals in Montreal. And it turns out that several of their teammates had a less than ideal week, too, encountering trouble at the US border before the race.
Speaking to the Vals Plat podcast, Alec Segaert, who raced to 11th in the time trial as Evenepoel took gold, recounted the troubles of Tiesj Benoot and Quinten Hermans at an American border post.
The pair had gone for a training ride from Belgium's base in Bromont, south-east of Montreal, towards the US border when they were stopped and reprimanded by American border officials.
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"Those customs officers weren’t exactly laughing about it," Segaert said, according to Het Laatste Nieuws. "They held them there for a few hours to fill out all sorts of paperwork. In the end, they didn’t ride another metre and were forced to return to Canada."
Regardless of their travails, Benoot and Hermans managed to complete a leg-aching 198km ride with 2,805 metres of climbing. Benoot uploaded the ride to Strava, jokingly naming it 'Mexico was in sight'.
The map of the ride shows the route the pair took towards the border, heading due south from Belgium's base, before turning around and heading on their ultra-long training loop back north.
"It was a very small border post, where very few cars passed in those 2 to 3 hours. In any case, they were definitely not allowed through on bicycles. Checks had to be carried out to see if they weren't members of cartels or something similar," Segaert said.
In the end, Benoot and Hermans avoided any cases of mistaken identity and got back to base to continue preparations for the race. Benoot rode to 25th place on the 273km course as Hermans recorded a DNF.
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