Otegem guarantees the rematch of the Belgian championship

Wednesday January 10, 2024 at 10:00 AM

The Otegem cyclocross is one of the oldest existing cyclocross races in Flanders. Even a classic like the Duinencross in Koksijde was founded in the same year as the cross in Otegem, namely in 1969. CyclingFlits takes you into history.

Those responsible for that first edition? The non-profit organization Otegem Boven. The club had already been founded a few years earlier, with the aim of organizing several cycling races during ‘den Ommegang’ and the Otegem fair.

And that also included a cyclocross, with a very striking date. The Monday the day after the Belgian championship would become the permanent spot on the calendar. “The riders saw it as the ‘rematch’ for the Belgian Championships. We often had the new Belgian champion at the start, but he usually did not win after the festivities the day before,” ex-organizer René Vervaeke tells us, who played a key role for the Otegem cross from 1980 to 2009. Because of the date, the cross is also called the Weaver’s Mass Day Cross, after the first Monday after Epiphany.

“Not an obvious date, a Monday that does not fall during the Christmas holidays. And yet we often had around 6,000 spectators. The first time we contacted Sven Nys to come ride with us, he said: ‘There must be few people, surely, on a Monday?’ But he was still surprised that the interest was so great. The cross in Otegem is a real village festival, for which people like to take time off work. We had to work hard for this, and we had to be creative to ensure sufficient publicity. But we had a good region to get sponsors, so we could often pay the best Belgians.”

It also helped that the honors list was nicely filled in the early years, by cross icons such as Albert Van Damme, the brothers De Vlaeminck and Robert Vermeire. “But we have also had our setbacks. We were unable to organize in 1979 because it was very slippery,” says Vervaeke. “That bad weather is a constant throughout the history of the cross in Otegem. Snow, sleet, rain: it was always something. Fortunately, we were financially safe from setbacks in advance, otherwise we would have ceased to exist a long time ago.”

2009 became a crucial year within the organization, because René Vervaeke suddenly resigned as chairman of the organizing non-profit organization Otegem Boven for administrative reasons. Under the leadership of first Willy Ovaere and now Benny Lavaert, survival was guaranteed. In all those years, the organizers never yielded to regularity criteria, but the honors list never suffered because of that.

What’s more, in 1998 Sven Nys achieved one of his very first victories as a professional in Otegem. And in 2014, a very young Wout van Aert did the same. The day after his much-discussed disqualification at the Belgian Championship for U23s in Waregem due to a false start, Van Aert attacked Klaas Vantornout. Good for his first professional victory. The record holder is Mathieu van der Poel with five victories in a row between 2016 and 2020. Among the ladies, who have been racing in Otegem since 2013, Sanne Cant’s two wins are a record.

Latest winners Otegem
Men
2023: Laurens Sweeck
2022: Not organized, due to the corona crisis
2021: Not organized, due to the corona crisis
2020: Mathieu van der Poel
2019: Mathieu van der Poel
2018: Mathieu van der Poel
2017: Mathieu van der Poel
2016: Mathieu van der Poel
2015: Kevin Pauwels
2014: Wout van Aert

Women
2023: Marion Norbert-Ribérolle
2022: Not organized, due to the corona crisis
2021: Not organized, due to the corona crisis
2020: Alicia Franck
2019: Denise Betsema
2018: True Cant
2017: Christine Majerus
2016: Jolien Verschueren
2015: True Cant
2014: Helen Wyman

In the 2023-2024 season, the cross in Otegem is scheduled for Monday, January 15, 2024.