Using a gravel race as the final event for a Grand Tour build-up is unusual, to say the least - but that's exactly what Wout van Aert will be doing this Sunday.
Soon to take part in the Vuelta a España for three weeks - an event he has ridden once, back in 2024, where spectacular initial success was poleaxed by a terrible crash and injuries - for three hours this Sunday Van Aert will be heading off-road for his debut in the Belgian Gravel Championships.
For those looking for a reason why he'd do that so close to a Grand Tour, it turns out there are four: firstly the Gravel Championships used to held in May, but is now in August, a period when there's less racing, secondly this particular event is very close to his home town of Herentaals, and thirdly - unlike other years when he would have raced - he's not riding anywhere on the road this weekend.
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The fourth is maybe the most important: Van Aert likes off-road racing. If his past in cyclo-cross didn't make that clear enough, not to mention the occasional dabble in gravel racing and his longstanding series of participations in Strade Bianche (and win on the same roads in the Giro d'Italia a year last May), his victory in Paris-Roubaix this spring is the latest reminder of that.
“In August, the big advantage is that the top road riders are all available", Belgian gravel Championships organisation member Erwen Vervecken told Wielerflits. "Quite a few riders are coming off the Tour or preparing for the autumn. In May, you had no chance with those guys. So this is ideal."
Then there's the location, Grobbendonk, barely seven kilometres as the crow flies (or the gravel racer rides) from Van Aert's village of Herentals, whilst one of Van Aert's training partners, Daan Soete (Ridley Racing), who will be taking part on Sunday, actually comes from Grobbendonk. Nor does Van Aert have any road racing obligations this weekend, unlike in 2025 when he took part in the Hamburg one-day WorldTour race, now known as the ADAC Cyclassics. (For the record, he finished tenth.)
As for the main reason, Vervecken confirmed to Wielerflits, "It's because he enjoys it. It fits into his training for the Vuelta, and he gets to ride competitively on the roads where he does a lot of gravel anyway.”
“He can arrive at the start of that race without stress. If he manages to secure the title in his home region, that’s a nice bonus. If not, he won’t lose any sleep over it either. Ultimately, the real goals for him come much later in the season."
As for the course itself, Belgian newspaper Nieuwsblad sent one of their reporters to ride the entire route, which centres on Grobbendonk - home until his death in 2022 to the Herman Vanspringel, aka Monsieur Bordeaux-Paris, the long-defunct marathon race he won seven times - and the neighbouring town of Bouwel, with bridges being built specially in the woods inbetween.
The toughest part of the course, according to Nieuwsblad, for the more than 1,300 participants on Sunday - including Van Aert, Tim Merlier (Soudal-QuickStep), Lotte Claes (Fenix-Premier Tech) and her teammate, elite women's defending champion Marthe Truyen - will be a disused railway maintenance track, which has been cleared of weeds over the summer specially for the occasion.
"In their place, we see an endless stretch of nearly 700 meters of loose, flaky sand, where we have to put our feet down after just five turns of the pedals, simply to avoid falling." Nieuwsblad's article read, while residents reportedly claimed that this key section, 15 kilometres from the finish in Grobbendonk, would be where Van Aert would attack to win.
Should Van Aert fail, though, he'll have another opportunity to take a gravel victory (of sorts) in the very near future. Stage 6 of the Vuelta a España features the first-ever full gravel section of the race, a 3.5-kilometre sector close to the summit of the Cat. 1 Puerto del Bartolo. Quite apart from its own appeal, Sunday's Belgian Gravel Championships, then, will provide a good chance to practice for that, too.
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