Wout van Aert changed his shoes in the middle of a race and still won

Wout van Aert didn’t have the better of Tom Pidcock until the final lap, but the Belgian champion survived the Brit’s aggression and a shoe change to earn his seventh consecutive win in Saturday’s muddy Baal, Belgium round of the X2O Trofee at the Sven Nys cycling centre.

Aerts and Vanthourenhout made the junction at the beginning of lap three, but again Aerts started to lag. Soon the mud reestablished the van Aert, Pidcock and Iserbyt lead group, with Aerts and Vanthourenhout 21 seconds in arrears.

Van Aert rode at the pointy end of the race on lap four and his pace pried open a gap first back to Iserbyt and then to the British champion. With a good lead, van Aert went down in the mud and then had to change a shoe in the pits. Pidcock was only two seconds adrift.

A shoe change. Normally, you’d change you know, your bike. But the Belgian champ rolled in and swapped his kicks and jumped right back on again.

The shoe switch delayed van Aert enough that he was behind both Pidcock and Iserbyt on Lap 5. The great Belgian had a big challenge in getting back into the race. First he reeled in and dropped Iserbyt. Van Aert was nine seconds back of Pidcock with two laps to go.

Van Aert lassoed Pidcock before the bell lap and then passed the Brit. The Belgian kept gaining more real estate and would triumph by ten seconds. Isertby ditched Aerts and would finish 47 seconds ahead to clip Toon’s GC lead.

Here’s ole Wout changing his shoe, in a race. Triathletes, beware. Because you know damn well van Aert, just like his arch-rival Mathieu van der Poel, can probably swim and run better than everyone else too. Now they can transition fast, too.