Round Three having been canceled last weekend, the 2024-2025 World Cup resumed on Sunday at the demanding Namur, Belgium course where Michael Vanthourenhout proved the strongest in the mud. Vanthourenhout passed a prone Toon Aerts on the final lap to earn three victories in a row, two in the World Cup. Vanthourenhout now leads the series by 27 points over Aerts. Canadian Ian Ackert was as high as seventh and finished 23rd.
Preliminaries
Teammates Eli Iserbyt and Vanthourenhout had claimed the first two rounds and the latter was on top of the table. Vanthourenhout was on a roll, having triumphed in the Dublin World Cup and Saturday’s X2O Badkamers Trofee. The absent Tom Pidcock earned last year’s Namur round.
Four Canadians repped in Namur: Ian Ackert, Evan Russel, Liam Sargent and Fabian Merino, who came 33rd in Saturday’s X2O Trofee race, were in a 78-strong field, one twice as large as that at last Sunday’s cancelled race in Italy.
Aerts claimed the hole shot on Lap 1 and led onto the climb. Canadian champion Ian Ackert had a great start, swimming upstream into seventh. Gerben Kuypers wanted to blaze the trail, while Vanthourenhout had a difficult start. Aerts grabbed the lead again to finish the first circuit. Ackert had sifted down to 15th.
Kuypers’ teammate Kevin Kuhn grabbed the wheel at the start of Lap 2. Vanthourenhout was making up ground, but Iserbyt had slipped in behind Ackert. Aerts, Kuypers and Laurens Sweeck were still front and centre. Ackert finished the lap in 21st.
Kuhn kept up the pressure at the beginning of Lap 3 of 9. Iserbyt looked crestfallen in the pits after more than one crash and then withdrew from the contest. Now there was a clear quintet at the business end of the race: Kuhn, Kuypers, Sweeck, Vanthourenhout and Emiel Verstrynge. Vanthourenhout assumed the lead. Aerts then sewed up the split and the string was long once more. Vanthourenhout, Kuypers and Verstrynge flared off the front and finished the lap 14 seconds clear. Ackert was 20th.
On Lap 4 Aerts lit out after the trio by himself and finally joined in on the infamous off-camber traverse section. The pits were in a cleaning frenzy. Ackert was now in 23rd.
Aerts couldn’t hang on Lap 5 as Vanthourenhout continued to press the issue. Kuypers faded a bit and found…
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