Greg Van Avermaet - On Top Of The World

The 2017 season saw Greg Van Avermaet finally clinch a debut monument, amid a run of major spring wins that helped propel him to the top of the WorldTour ranking. Procycling met the Belgian Classics king at his home to find out what's next.

- Edward Pickering

Dendermonde, a quiet Belgian town on the Schelde river located in the triangle formed by Gent, Antwerp and Brussels, Belgium’s three biggest cities, is basking in an unseasonal burst of late autumn sunshine, the last warmth of the year. The blue sky and pleasant temperatures are quite unFlandrian.

Dendermonde is home to Greg Van Avermaet, Olympic gold medallist, WorldTour champion, monument winner, achiever of top 10s and local boy – he was born in Lokeren, the next town over. We’re sitting in Van Avermaet’s garden, which has an open and expansive view on to the cultivated fields of the East Flandrian plain – there’s no real hill between here and the North Sea 80 kilometres away. “I don’t like it too much here,” Van Avermaet says, laughing. “For training it’s terrible – it’s flat, and the weather is not really good, but it always feels nice to come home. I could live somewhere else, but this will always be my home.”

He adds: “I think I’m really Belgian.” 

Van Avermaet’s house, midway through a renovation which has taken a while longer than planned, is out of bounds, so we’re at a table in a broad expanse of grass which is being idly nibbled at by a robot lawnmower moving at random around the lawn. The mower, motorised and autonomous, sticks to our part of the garden, buzzing around our ankles. “He’s friendly. He always likes to be near people,” jokes Van Avermaet.