One of the world’s best cyclists, the Belgian Wout van Aert, almost died on the roads of Brabant this week. That says his training buddy Jan Bakelants in a podcast of the Belgian sports broadcaster Sporza. “Wout was almost dead. He was almost under a concrete mixer. It was really harrowing.”
In the run-up to the Tour of Flanders next Sunday, top favorite Van Aert completed a long training session on Tuesday. He did this with cyclocross rider Daan Soete and former professional Jan Bakelants.
The ride was 138 kilometers long, which would partly lead on Belgian and Brabant roads. In Oirschot, the men drank coffee at COPA Coffee and tea house on the Princéehof and then the men turned around and drove back to their home country, as can be seen on the Strava profiles of Van Aert and Bakelants.
But that training ride almost went wrong, says Bakelants in the podcast Cycling Club Wattage. “Wout had to do interval training, but the cycle path on that road was not suitable for speeds of 40 to 45 kilometers per hour.”
“Wout had no choice but to drive him into the side.”
That is why Van Aert, Soete and Bakelants decided not to ride on the cycle path, but on the road. Exactly where this happened in Brabant is not entirely clear.
“I know from my own experience that Dutch drivers dare to take the law into their own hands if they see that a cyclist is not riding on the bike path,” says Bakelants.
That happened a little later, he said. “After cycling on the road for five minutes, I suddenly heard the horn of a concrete mixer that came driving past us. Like a real road pirate, the driver of the concrete mixer closed the door while he was honking.” Bakelants means that the concrete mixer tried to run them off the road.
“The action of the concrete mixer was really out of all proportion.”
Van Aert was cycling next to that other training buddy, Daan Soete, at that time. “Wout had no choice but to drive Daan onto the roadside. Otherwise he might have gone to heaven.”
Bakelants puts his hand in his own bosom in the podcast. Because the same rules apply to cyclists as to ‘ordinary’ cyclists. If there is a bicycle path, you must cycle on it.
“But the action of the concrete mixer was really out of all proportion,” says Bakelants. “I don’t think you can take that kind of action in traffic. Even though as a concrete mixer you think you have more rights on the road than a cyclist, for whom there was a poorly constructed cycle path.”
