After six days of hard work, Jasper De Buyst and Otto Vergaerde finished third at the Lotto Six-Days Flanders-Ghent. On the exciting last day, four duos battled for the three podium places. In the final madison Iljo Keisse and Michael Mørkøv turned out to be the best. De Ketele and van Hoecke got second, De Buyst and Vergaerde third.

“I came here to win, even though I knew strong duos would try to beat me," De Buyst said. "Day one was hard, during the week we got better and better and after the third day we took over the lead. At the beginning of the last day we weren't in first place anymore, but the first duos were very close together in the ranking. After the first madison of the day it didn’t look good for us. In the end we conquered a podium place, respect for the winners who were strong the whole week.

“For Otto it was only his fourth Six-Day, last year he was fifth. It’s a big difference of course, becoming fifth without any pressure or live with the pressure of the overall win. He did a good job, but it’s logical that he had difficult moments during the past six days. After all, we are only 21 years old. A third consecutive victory would have indeed be great, but I don’t want to moan, we can be satisfied to step on the podium next to top riders like Keisse and Mørkøv.

“Now I’ll go on a holiday. I’m leaving tomorrow and in the beginning of December I’ll go on training camp with the team. The next months I will focus on Rio. We’ll talk about this during the training camp, but now it’s time to recharge the batteries, both physically and mentally. It has been a long season. Last winter there was no time for a holiday, so it’s now even more welcome.”