Gianni Vermeersch wins Gravel World Championships with solo attack

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Gianni Vermeersch (Belgium) landed the inaugural UCI Gravel World Championships after he distanced breakaway companion Daniel Oss (Italy) on the final lap of the finishing circuit in Cittadella.

The pair had spent over 140km off the front of a race that was ultimately dominated by riders from the WorldTour, who filled the first nine places on the standings, with pre-race favourite Mathieu van der Poel (Netherlands) winning the sprint for the bronze medal ahead of Greg Van Avermaet (Belgium).

Vermeersch has had the misfortune to be a contemporary of both Van der Poel and Wout van Aert on the cyclo-cross circuit, a fact of life that had effectively put the rainbow jersey in the discipline beyond his reach.

In the Veneto on Sunday, however, the Belgian was full value for what he acknowledged was the biggest win of his career on any terrain. Vermeersch’s road endurance helped him cruise into a five-minute lead with Oss, while his aptitude in cyclo-cross was a key factor as he put his breakaway companion in difficulty on one of the final off-road sectors with 7.5km remaining.

“It was one of the biggest chances for me to once become world champion. I can't believe I'll have the rainbow jersey in my house," Vermeersch said.

“The last single track was perfect for me, it was like cyclo-cross. I just went full into it, and I heard metre per metre I gained some advantage on Daniel, so I just went full from there to the finish.”

After hugging the bank of the Brenta on the run-in, the route kicked upwards into the walled down of Cittadella, and Vermeersch made light work of those ramps to come home 43 seconds ahead of Oss.

"I was hesitating a bit, because I knew the final 500m was perfect for me, but there was a group coming from behind and we heard their gap was only 2:30, so I wanted to go full on that part to get the advantage,” Vermeersch said of his race-winning attack. “When [Oss] was dropped, I kept going."

When Vermeersch and Oss had crossed the finish in Cittadella for the first time with 54km remaining, their lead over the chasing group was already a mammoth five minutes and it was already clear that they would dispute the rainbow jersey between them.

“We worked together because there was a chance for both of us, but it was hard for me to follow him on the technical stuff, I had cramps,” said Oss.

Behind, the sizeable Italian contingent was smartly squeezing the momentum out of any attempt to marshal a coherent pursuit, while Van der Poel was understandably reluctant to try to shut down his Alpecin-Deceuninck teammate Vermeersch.

Van der Poel was always likely to leave a mark on this race, however, not least as it was his first race since his ill-fated expedition to the Road World Championships in Wollongong. On the final lap of the finishing circuit, he was part of an elite group with Van Avermaet, Alessandro De Marchi (Italy) and Magnus Cort (Denmark) that made rapid inroads into the two leaders’ advantage.

On the final haul into Cittadella, Van der Poel eased clear with Van Avermaet, and he duly outkicked the former Olympic champion to take bronze, 1:28 down on Vermeersch. U23 road world champion Yevgeniy Fedorov (Kazakhstan) was fifth at 1:39 ahead of Cort and De Marchi, with Zdenek Stybar (Czech Republic), Davide Ballerini (Italy) and Andreas Stokbro (Denmark) completing the top 10.

How it unfolded

Shortly before the start in Vicenza, a small contingent of reporters gathered for a brief audience with the overwhelming favourite Van der Poel. By day’s end, however, the first rainbow jersey in the discipline would end up on the shoulders of the other rider aboard the Alpecin-Deceuninck camper van, Gianni Vermeesch.

Both Vermeersch and Van der Poel were duly among the front-runners on the short early climb up to the basilica at Monte Berico, where the sheer power of the WorldTour road riders put the gravel specialists in difficulty.

On the eve of the race, there had been some understandable dismay among the gravel specialists that the UCI had not initially taken Gravel Series points into consideration when allocating grid positions at the start, though a compromise was eventually brokered before the event got underway.

In any case, the gravel specialists were back to the fore on the technical sectors that followed, with men like Nathan Haas (Australia) and Nicolas Roche (Ireland) navigating their way back up to the front. Haas would later be a faller, sustaining a nasty finger injury in the process, though he remounted and formed part of the sizeable chasing group on the finishing circuit, completing the race in 16th place.

Magnus Cort, Miguel Ángel López (Colombia), Samuele Zocoratto (Italy) and Matt Beers (South Africa), meanwhile, were among the first riders on the offensive, but Van der Poel soon stitched the race back together with a searing acceleration.

The key moment of the race came a little over 40km in, when Vermeersch and Oss clipped off the front and the Squadra Azzurra collaborated smoothly to dissuade anybody from organising a chase.

“It was on a bridge section, there was some single track, and it was so hard at the back of the bunch. Daniel attacked and the other guys hesitated, so I jumped across,” Vermeersch said. “There was a group of six chasers, but they never got on.”

Despite the lack of radio earpieces, Oss and Vermeersch were able to pick up regular updates on the time gaps from the television quad bike. The news was invariably encouraging: their advantage expanded rapidly, reaching a maximum of 5:30 on the flat run north from Padova to Cittadella.

The surface beneath their wheels may have oscillated between single track, gravel and grass, but this often had the feel of a road race. Oss and Vermeersch struck up a sound working alliance, while their allies in the group behind – namely the Italian team, Van Avermaet and Van der Poel – were never likely to help in their pursuit.

On reaching Cittadella for the first time, they had more than five minutes in hand, and that buffer had only contracted to four minutes when they took the bell with 27km to go. From there, the allies of circumstance were now fighting it out for the world title.