Wout van Aert Launches Late-Race Attack to Win Zilvermeercross – Updated: Full Results

MOL, BELGIUM—As he does so often, Wout van Aert (Vastgoedservice – Golden Palace) went clear late in the race at Zilvermeercross with a perfectly-timed attack and rode across the line solo for the win with no rivals in sight.

The early tempo was set by Laurens Sweeck (ERA-Murprotec), who got to the front and drove the pace until a lead group of 12 was established.

This group was short lived as Mathieu van der Poel (BKCP-Powerplus) used the quick start as a launching point for an attack, and went clear with van Aert to establish what would be the race-winning split.

Realizing the danger of van der Poel and van Aert together, Sweeck attacked the chase group,  going across to the duo. The group of three was joined by Rob Peeters (Vastgoedservice – Golden Palace), Tom Meeusen (Telenet Fidea) and eventually Sven Nys (Crelan AA-Drink).

With four laps to go the group was perhaps too large for van der Poel, and he attacked, bringing Sweeck with him. Peeters and Meeusen clawed their way back with a perfectly-positioned van Aert, who once contact was made, counter attacked the group, and went out on his own.

Van Aert’s pace was too much for the chasers, and an untimely crash by van der Poel extinguished any hope he had of going up to van Aert.

Van Aert grew his gap, winning by a healthy margin—his 12th of the year, while van der Poel recovered from his crash well, taking second over a quickly-fading Sweeck, who was able to hold on for third place.

Be sure to check out our Elite Women’s Zilvermeercross race report.

Zilvermeercross Elite Men's Race Results