Herentals cross organiser expresses slight disappointnent over Wout Van Aert's absence: "Yes, we thought that Wout would participate anyway"

Herentals has a special place in the cycling world, being the base to not only Wout Van Aert and Sanne Cant, but also Alpecin-Deceuninck's bosses, the Roodhoft brothers among many others. In de Leiderstrui caught up with race organizer Erwin Vervecken about the presence of many big names such as Mathieu van der Poel at his race.

When this winter's cross calendar was made public, it was noticed that the cross in Herentals had been postponed from the beginning of January to mid-December. The quick thinker would soon conclude that this would be partly based on Van Aert's possible schedule, but nothing turned out to be further from the truth. "If we had stayed at the beginning of January, we would have been between Baal and Koksijde. That would have been too much, an overkill," notes Vervecken.

Nevertheless, he had hoped for the arrival of the Jumbo-Visma star, who made his return to the field on December 9 in Essen. "Yes, we thought that Wout would participate anyway," Vervecken admits. ¨"But the altitude camp is this week, which is a bit more practical in December than in January. We have to respect it. Luckily we had Mathieu at the start."

And not only Van der Poel made his return: Tom Pidcock, Quinten Hermans and Gianni Vermeersch also made their cross debut in Herentals, to the surprise of Vervecken himself. "I was on the phone with Gianni, who, together with Quinten, was on the starting list at once, even though no request had been received at all," he shares.