'It’s great to be able to compete in such a fair race and put my off-road skills to good use' says Visma-Lease a Bike rider after pinning on a number at the UCI Gravel World Series event
Wout van Aert may have been on a break from road racing since winning Paris-Roubaix, but the Visma-Lease a Bike rider was still quite happy to pin on a number in Limburg at the UCI Gravel World Series event, Marly Grav.
It may have been a last minute entry with the expectation of "just a lot of fun" – although that didn't mean he skipped the pre-race recon ride – but he walked away with another victory after a solo sortie of more than 20km and a renewed taste for gravel.
"It was a really tough race, but at the same time I enjoyed it," said Van Aert in a team release.
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"It was fun racing here. It’s a completely different kind of race to what I’m used to. It’s great to be able to compete in such a fair race and put my off-road skills to good use."
It certainly wasn't the first time the talented multi-discipline rider has taken on gravel, with Van Aert having raced Houffa Gravel and the UCI Gravel World Championships in 2023, where he came eighth after an untimely mechanicals and a crash in the opening 60 kilometers.
Its now been a while since the Belgian has squeezed the discipline into his already busy schedule.
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"We are so busy with all the WorldTour races and the preparation through the season that it's not often that there is a race close by that I can attend so when I saw this on the calendar I thought why not?"
The experience he had at the Dutch UCI Gravel World Series race clearly was way better than that of the 2023 World Championships, with the aim on Sunday being to have "just a lot of fun. I don't have any expectation because the last month was more holidays than proper training," he told TNT Sports.
Despite that he quickly went to the front of the race early and thinned the front of the race to a small lead group before shedding them all with a powerful acceleration that not even the gravel world champion, Florian Vermeersch (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) could claw his way back to.
Ultimately he walked away from the day of racing with a clear-cut solo victory and a taste for the discipline that often draws retired and current WorldTour professionals alike.
"I’ll definitely be taking part more often," concluded Van Aert.
Simone is a degree-qualified journalist that has accumulated decades of wide-ranging experience while working across a variety of leading media organisations. She joined Cyclingnews as a Production Editor at the start of the 2021 season and has now moved into the role of Australia Editor. Previously she worked as a freelance writer, Australian Editor at Ella CyclingTips and as a correspondent for Reuters and Bloomberg. Cycling was initially purely a leisure pursuit for Simone, who started out as a business journalist, but in 2015 her career focus also shifted to the sport.
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