End of career 2023: Greg Van Avermaet - Olympic champion & Roubaix conqueror

A small breeze is blowing. It would be perfect for drying the colourful jerseys hanging on a washing line in this garden in the small Belgian town of Dendermonde. But they don't need to be. The man who put them there has more sentimental reasons for displaying them.

"Unfortunately, this adventure will come to an end," wrote Greg van Avermaet on the video on Instagram with which he announced the end of his 17-year professional career on 3 May 2023. "As hard as the decision was, when I look back, I'm very proud of what I've achieved." A golden helmet hangs next to the jerseys on the line. It symbolises the 38-year-old's greatest success: winning the road race at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

The Games came at just the right time for van Avermaet. The Belgian was at the peak of his career. He won 13 of his 42 professional victories in the Olympic year and the following season - almost all of them at World Tour level. Two victories at the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, the victory at Tirreno-Adriatico, at E3 Harelbeke, at Gent-Wevelgem, a stage of the Tour de France and three days in yellow all fell into this period. And of course the victory at Paris-Roubaix.

Greg - the name of a Tour winner

Van Avermaet decided to take up cycling relatively late, at the age of 19. Prior to that, he played football at the same time, standing in goal. It was only when he was only allowed to play in the second team that he preferred cycling to cleats. Van Avermaet was actually born into cycling. Both his father and his grandfather were professional cyclists, and the Belgian even got his first name after a Tour de France winner. When Greg van Avermaet was born in Lokeren in May 1985, Greg LeMond had finished third in the Tour of France the year before. He would go on to win it in 1986. And father van Avermaet was even happier.

>> Greg van Avermaet in profile

In 2006, the son started out in the Continental team Bodysol - Win for Life - Jong Vlaanderen and immediately became Belgian U23 champion. Van Avermaet turned professional the very next year. His four victories in his first season confirmed what the Predictor - Lotto team (today Lotto-Dstny) saw in him. His maiden victory came in the very first race. The 5th stage of the Tour of Qatar was won by van Avermaet in the sprint of a small group ahead of Marcel Sieberg.

The 2008 season also saw the Belgian still more of a sprinter than a classics specialist, who would later be nicknamed the "King of Flanders". In his first Grand Tour, the Vuelta, van Avermaet finished in the top 8 eleven times, including his first victory in a three-week national tour. In the sprint of a small group, the Lotto rider was faster than Davide Rebellin and Juan Antonio Flecha. The following day, van Avermaet also took the blue jersey for the points leader. He had to give it back on the way, but it was back on his shoulders in Madrid.

Van Avermaet: From sprinter to classics hunter

The good results in the battle with the fast men led Lotto to believe that van Avermaet was a sprinter. But his final speed was not enough to be able to compete with riders like Tom Boonen in the long term. In 2009, top placings became rarer and this trend continued in 2010. Neither year brought victories. Top placings, such as 5th place in the road race at the World Championships in Geelong, Australia, when van Avermaet achieved the best World Championships result of his career, were mainly achieved in small groups.

They parted ways for the new season. Van Avermaet moved to the BMC Racing Team in the USA. He stayed there for eight years - the most successful of his career. At BMC, sports director John Lelangue did not opt for the sprinter Greg van Avermaet. Instead, it turned out that the then 24-year-old had the punch for hilly terrain. And also coped well on cobblestones.

And so van Avermaet became a winning rider again. In his first year with BMC, 2011, he won the Tour de Wallonie and Paris-Tours as a soloist. He finished second in the Clasica San Sebastian and seventh in Liège-Bastogne-Liège. A year later, he finished fourth in the Tour of Flanders, narrowly missing the podium. Even though he never won it, the Ronde was the Belgian's most successful race with nine top 10 finishes, including two second and two third places.

>> Career ends 2023: Peter Sagan

Eight days in yellow save van Avermaet's season

Van Avermaet's best years followed. National awards increasingly bore his name. The "Kristallen Fiets" trophy for the best Belgian cyclist from the newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws went to van Avermaet four times in a row from 2014 to 2017, something only Philippe Gilbert had managed before and no one else since. Het Nieuwsblatt crowned him "Flandrien of the Year" a year earlier and five times in a row. In 2016, van Avermaet was also named Sportsman of the Year in Belgium.

But from 2018 onwards, things no longer ran smoothly. After finishing top of the UCI world rankings in 2017, van Avermaet almost only celebrated stage wins with the team in the team time trial, four times in the season. Including at the Tour de France. This earned him the yellow jersey for the second time in his career on stage 3. He was to defend it for eight days and thus save his hapless season.

Fourth place in Roubaix and fifth in the Tour of Flanders as well as the good week in yellow were enough to extend his contract with the team. From then on, the team was called CCC and had a Polish shoe retailer as its main sponsor. Van Avermaet stayed, but the big success did not return. However, the Belgian was now also in his mid-30s and had outgrown his best form. He narrowly missed out on his third victory at the Omloop and his first in San Sebastian before it was still enough for a big success. Van Avermaet won the World Tour race in Montreal. Almost four years would pass before he was able to celebrate once again at the small French one-day race Boucles de l'Aulne in May 2023, shortly after announcing the end of his career.

Van Avermaet sees blame in the corona vaccine

In the meantime, CCC had broken up due to corona. The team was disbanded. Van Avermaet signed for three years in France with AG2R Citroën. And got off to a good start. He finished a Belgian week with the E3 Prize, Gent-Wevelgem, Dwars door Vlaanderen and the Tour of Flanders in 6th, 12th, 7th and 3rd place, after which the results failed to materialise.

Van Avermaet blamed it on his corona vaccination. The last percentages were missing, there were problems with his immune system, he told Belgian media in the autumn after receiving his first dose before the Tour. He therefore postponed a booster until after the 2022 spring season, when he finished third in the Omloop. He still had the wooden medal at the first Gravel World Championships in autumn, but nothing else worthwhile came out of it. After van Avermaet was only able to ride with but not for victory in the spring of 2023, he drew the line.

Van Avermaet: "Time to reminisce"

Paris-Tours on 8 October was his last race as a professional. Not entirely coincidentally, he had celebrated his first classics victory there twelve years earlier. A week later, van Avermaet bid farewell to Dendermonde, where he has made his home for years, at a big party in the town's market square together with his fans and old companions. Several cycle tours of his old training routes were offered and football was also played.

"My fans have supported me through thick and thin in my career," said van Avermaet. "That's why I want to give something back to everyone, and my farewell as a professional rider seemed like the ideal opportunity to thank them for their support over the past few years. It's also nice to have team-mates from the past and present with me one last time and to reminisce."

Greg van Avermaet's greatest successes

• Gold in the Olympic road race in Rio 2016
• Paris-Roubaix 2017 winner
• 2 stage wins (2015, 2016) Tour de France (+ 2 with the team), eleven days in yellow (2016, 2018)
• 2x second (2014, 2017), 2x third (2015, 2021) Tour of Flanders
• Winner Tirreno-Adriatico 2016
• 2x winner Omloop Het Nieuwsblad (2016, 2017)
• Winner Grand Prix Montreal 2019
• First UCI World Ranking 2017
• Winner Gent-Wevelgem 2017
• Winner E3 Harelbeke 2017
• 2x overall winner of the Tour de Wallonie (2011, 2013)
• Paris-Tours 2011 winner
• A total of 45 UCI victories, 13 of them at World Tour level