Michael Vanthourenhout won in Dublin a fortnight ago and on Saturday he triumphed in Herentals. After almost a month’s recess, the 2024-2025 X2O Badkamers Trofee resumed with Saturday’s fourth of eight rounds in Herentals, Belgium, where the Pauwels Sauzen rider earned the top prize. At the midway point of the series Eli Isberyt leads Lars van der Haar by 41 seconds at the top of the table.
Earlier in the day Canada’s Liam Sargent placed 55th in the U23 race.
Preliminaries
Oudenaarde round winner van der Haar’s lead atop the X2O Trofee standings was even smaller than his Superprestige-topping advantage. Iserbyt was lurking two seconds behind in the Trofee. Thibau Nys and Niels Vandeputte had taken top honours in the other two races. Last year, absentee Mathieu van der Poel claimed the Herentals round.
Fabian Merino was the lone Canadian entrant.
Toon Aerts scooped up the hole shot into the first left-hand turn on Lap 1. Pim Ronhaar crashed early and was far down, as was Vanthourenhout. Toon’s brother Thijs and Iserbyt were the closest pursuers. Van der Haar didn’t want Iserbyt to take bonus seconds at the end of the lap, but he couldn’t prevent it and Iserbyt grabbed the series lead on course.
Aerts carried on with his solo raid on Lap 2. Vanthourenhout surfed his way through the traffic and became Aerts’ closest chaser. Iserbyt crashed on the descent and lost some places. Vanthourenhout made the junction and then seized the reins. Laurens Sweeck joined Vanthourenhout to finish the second lap seven seconds before Ronhaar.
Aerts was fading and after a bike change on Lap 3 of 8 was outside the top 10. Ronhaar made the leading group a trio.
At the beginning of Lap 4, Vandeputte linked up with the trio to join the fight for a win. The Iserbyt-van der Haar gang wasn’t too far behind. Ronhaar flew the coop and Vanthourenhout wanted to dump his chasemates. Ronhaar had a seven-second advantage going into Lap 5.
Vanthourenhout and Ronhaar were reunited on Lap 5. They both hopped on fresh bikes. Sweeck occupied Position 3 and was only four seconds in arrears at the end of the lap.
Sweeck linked up on Lap 6 but only momentarily. Vanthourenhout went to the front and piled on the pressure, but the three riders crossed the line together.
Poor Sweeck tailed off again on the penultimate lap and had to hustle to latch back on. But when…
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