Two young riders, Dutch champion Tibor del Grosso and Belgian champion Thibau Nys, slugged it out under the lights in Tuesday’s special night race round of the 2025-2026 Superprestige series in Diegem, Belgium. Del Grosso was amazed to see his late-race mistake superceded by an even more consequential Nys error and claimed his second consecutive Superprestige victory. Niels Vandeputte leads the series by two points over Michael Vanthourenhout. Tyler Clark was top Canadian in 47th.
Earlier in the day in the Junior men’s race, Canada’s Emilien Belzile came sixth, Evan Moore placed 11th and Sagan Goertz made 13th.
Preliminaries
Del Grosso took a huge win in the last round by outsprinting Wout van Aert. Vandeputte might not have won any rounds yet, but he still led double-round winner Vanthourenhout by one point and absent Merksplas victor Joris Neiuwenhuis by 18. We’ll see no more Laurens Sweeck this season—a crash while turning into the finishing straight yesterday in X2O Badkamers Loenhout caused an injury that requires surgery.
The Canadian contingent was Tyler Clark, Cody Scott, Rhett Bates, Liam Sargent, Remi Brisebois and Lucas Goertz.
A huge crash in midpack caused by Vanthourenhout unclipping delayed the man in second place. Nys didn’t have a great start either. Mees Hendrikx and Filipe Orts were the early leaders, del Grosso lurking nearby. Del Grosso powered through the sand pit in first place. The gap was nine seconds to Nys, Vandeputte, Hendrikx, Orts and a few others.
Nys’s work on Lap 2 dropped the other chasers but he was still eight seconds in arrears of the race leader after two circuits.
Nys had a lot of dirt ahead on which to reel in del Grosso. During Lap 3 of 9 Vandeputte pulled the next chase group. Nys yanked back two seconds. On Lap 4, Nys made contact, but del Grosso pried open more space in the sand. Vanthourenhout had clambered up to 15th.
Nys found del Grosso’s rear wheel again on Lap 5 and then went to the front. But del Grosso wanted to lead into the sand where once more he took the advantage. Again Nys brought him back before the line.
Lap 6 saw Nys insist on doing the driving. Suddenly the duo found chaser Joran Wyseure crowding them. Nys was first in and first out of the sand….
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