There wasn’t much opposition against the impressive performance from Wout Van Aert (Crelan-Charles) at the Belgian championship in Ostend. Halfway the opening lap Van Aert was gone and behind him riders focused on second place rather than a pursuit on the lone leader.
Laurens Sweeck (ERA Real Estate-Circus) regretted that some riders opted not to spend energy in a pursuit. In the end, those who opted not to chase Van Aert also failed to get on the podium on Sunday. Sweeck finished in third place on the Wellington hippodrome, capturing his first medal at the Belgian championships.
In the week ahead of the race the 23-year-old was confronted with illness, which makes his third place quite a surprise.
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"Even before I was ill I would’ve signed to finish third,” Sweeck said at the post-race press conference in the Thermae Palace Hotel, next to the Wellington hippodrome. "Eventually it turned out to be the best possible result. Second place was an option too but Kevin is going very strong and even without my illness it would’ve been hard."
Usually Sweeck, Tom Meeusen (Telenet-Fidea) and European champion Toon Aerts (Telenet-Fidea) are the riders with a good start who try to hang on with Van Aert or Mathieu van der Poel (Beobank-Corendon). This time, both riders didn’t have their best start and other riders opted to let Van Aert ride away.
"Wout was gone and they quickly allowed him to go," Sweeck said. I was at quite a distance behind the main group and noticed that Toon did an effort but lacked support. With five men on your wheel you’re not riding flat out for the rest of the race. Toon probably lost ground too in the sand scrimmage. You quickly end up losing 10-15 seconds. When someone rides away it’s hard to close it back down. Someone made a mistake in front of me and then you quickly lose several positions.
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