Closing price Putte-Kapellen ends season (Kapellen)
Archive image. — © Erik Vandewalle
Tuesday interrupted the Belgian-Dutch road season with the Putte-Kapellen Closing Prize. Also this year the finish is in the Ertbrandstraat, on the border between Belgium and the Netherlands.
“In 2019 we took over the competition from Golazo”, said organizer Ben Simons, who also has the Antwerp Port Epic, Schaal Sels and Memorial Rik Van Steenbergen – Kempen Classic in his portfolio. “The choice to no longer organize the Closing Prize as a UCI race since 2018, but to move it to the national calendar, was a very good move. Otherwise this tradition match would have had no chance of survival. In any case, it is difficult to gather a strong, well-padded field of participants at the end of the season.”
For the rest, very little has changed. “After all these years, our course is still the same. With an unofficial start in the Ertbrandstraat, where the riders will finish after a few random laps. We are also quite satisfied with the field of participants: various professional teams will come to us with meetings”, Simons beams. “Logical by the way: who doesn’t want to be on the honors list between Nick Nuyens, Adrie van der Poel and Eddy Merckx?”