Wout van Aert narrowly missed out on the gold medal at the cyclocross world championships in Tabor. Meanwhile, he has already recovered from the disappointment. "I am proud that I could continue to fight and never gave up," he said in the talk show Bart & Siska.

Van Aert’s Worlds race could be split in two parts. First he seemed to lose the race due to a crash but he never gave up. "I never considered giving up."

"On the contrary, I'm glad I was able to push through and still ake second. To say that I would have won without bad luck would not be fair. But if everything had gone according to plan, we would have had a different race.”

Van Aert still doesn’t know what went wrong in the early part of the race.

"After one lap, my chain came off at a weird place. I still don’t know why. But I lost the race later due to my first crash. I suffered from the pain.

"I certainly do not play down Mathieu van der Poel’s performance. He is, after a strong season, the deserved winner. I spoke to him just before the doping test. I didn’t have much to say. I was disillusioned. "

Several experts predict a great future for van Aert both in cyclo-cross and on the road. However, the 20-year-old doesn’t want to change.  "For now I feel the best doing cross. It is important that I keep doing what I love doing.

"I have very little experience on the road and not had very many results. A switch is definitely not on the agenda. It has always been my dream to be a cross rider and therefore I don’t consider a change.”