A heatwave and 42 sectors of gravel and cobbles, through the industrial fringe of Belgium.
Cor Vos
Strade Bianche, Paris Roubaix, Tour of Flanders: these evocative, rough road races have fanatical followings and are appointment viewing for cycling fans around the world. But elsewhere in the calendar, there are lower-classified races cut from a similar cloth: races like Le Samyn, Tro-Bro León, Clásica Jaén Paraíso Interior, all of which test the riders with cobbles and dirt.
Antwerp Port Epic – a UCI 1.1 classified race around the sprawling port of Antwerp, close to Belgium’s border with the Netherlands, is one such race. The brutality and beauty of this race comes not in climbs – the race starts at seven metres above sea level and finishes two metres lower – but in the surfaces: 42 sectors of unpaved road across 192 km for the men, 40 sectors over 138 km for the women. These sectors are sometimes cobbled, sometimes dirt, sometimes running alongside vast towers of shipping containers and sometimes tracing a course through tunnels of emerald foliage.
The 2026 edition of the race was conducted in a May heatwave nudging 30° C (86° F), with the bikes and race convoy kicking up billowing clouds of dust in their wake. As is usually the case in road racing today, the race was attritional and ferociously fought, with WorldTour squads rubbing shoulders with ProTeams and local Continental squads.
For the women on Sunday, it was an utterly dominant SDWorx-Protime that got the flowers: Femke Marcus soloed to the line 1.23 ahead of a small group led home by teammate Marta Lach, with Femke Gerritse completing the podium sweep.
On Monday, the men’s race was repeatedly splintered by crashes and mechanicals; an early breakaway was brought back with 53 km remaining, another group of nine riders attacked, and in a tense, tactical finale, Per Strand Hagenes (Visma-Lease a Bike) sprinted to the win ahead of Pau Miquel (Bahrain-Victorious) and Dries de Bondt (Jayco-Alula).
There’s more that could be written about the race, sure, but I think the vibes are what we’re all here for: another idiosyncratic event through a landscape that is both gritty and green, riders sprinkled with dust, big beers on the podium, children on shoulders, weird trophies. Cycling: no sport like it.
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