Belgacom Belgian Grand Prix #3 C2, Verviers BEL

1st place @ Belgacom Belgian Grand Prix Verviers!

Today I won the 3rd round of the Belgian GP which took place in Verviers! It was an amazing racing day! Summer is finally back and last week's higher temperatures would allow me to finally train well and train hard again.

I feel good on the bike again, so it was no problem today to stay in the attacking front group which led out the race right at its very beginning. Only Tom Meeusen and me stayed ahead in the start loop, but when I decided to give it another speed-up, I went away and dropped also Tom, and so I had a gap of 50 seconds already in the second lap.

It felt almost like flying over the race course of Verviers in this great, dry and hot weather, on a typical mountain-bike track with 4 or 5 ascents of about 250m and lots of single-trails, and soon I would have a gap of 3 minutes on the rest of the field. Those 3 minutes were quiet a lot and comforting at that moment of the race, but shortly after this gap would turn out to be essential for my victory. 

Within a few minutes, a really heavy cloud-burst would turn the dry race course into a muddy, slippery battleground! With the given dry conditions at the start, I had of course used our fastest tires, the Schwalbe Furious Freds, which made it obviously impossible now to ride a bike! As if this wasn't enough, I also flatted my front wheel on a section with pieces of glass or something on there, right 500 m after that I had passed a tech zone!

Riding on my flat tire, I struggled to reach the next tech zone, but I luckily got there safe and sound! I immediately changed not only my flat tire but also the rear wheel and, now armed with this new set of wheels with noppy Racing Ralphs on there, I tried to pull away as hard as I could to save the remaining 60 seconds of my time gap!

I managed to carry this gap home and won the race with 1'04" on Sven Nijs and Bas Peters.

Find pictures of the race on sport.be.