Is more gravel racing on the cards for Wout van Aert? Last-minute Marly Grav entry ending with scorching solo win piques interest

Wout van Aert may have been on a break from road racing since winning Paris-Roubaix, but the Visma-Lease a Bike rider was still quite happy to pin on a number in Limburg at the UCI Gravel World Series event, Marly Grav.

It may have been a last minute entry with the expectation of “just a lot of fun” – although that didn’t mean he skipped the pre-race recon ride – but he walked away with another victory after a solo sortie of more than 20km and a renewed taste for gravel.

“It just a nice opportunity to do a gravel race,” Van Aert told broadcaster TNT Sports before the event

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“We are so busy with all the WorldTour races and the preparation through the season that it’s not often that there is a race close by that I can attend so when I saw this on the calendar I thought why not?”

The experience he had at the Dutch UCI Gravel World Series race clearly was way better than that of the 2023 World Championships, with the aim on Sunday being to have “just a lot of fun. I don’t have any expectation because the last month was more holidays than proper training,” he told TNT Sports.

Despite that he quickly went to the front of the race early and thinned the front of the race to a small lead group before shedding them all with a powerful acceleration that not even the gravel world champion, Florian Vermeersch (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) could claw his way back to.

Ultimately he walked away from the day of racing with a clear-cut solo victory and a taste for the discipline that often draws retired and current WorldTour professionals alike.

“I’ll definitely be taking part more often,” concluded Van Aert.

(Image credit: Marly Grav)