Gravel’s Newest Star: Greg Van Avermaet Joins Team Last Dance for Major Gravel Racing Campaign
Gravel’s booming race scene just landed perhaps its biggest name yet; certainly, it’s most highly decorated.
Last Wednesday, Paris-Roubaix winner and Olympic gold medalist Greg Van Avermaet announced that he’s joining Team Last Dance, a gravel-focused three-person race team out of Belgium, with his sights set on Unbound, FNLD GRVL, and the UCI Gravel World Championships.
“My motivation for joining the project is to stay active after so many years of road cycling,” Van Avermaet said. “I see it more as a transition period where I can keep on moving and experience a different kind of cycling. My first thought was to do some gravel races by myself, but I realized it would be even better to be part of a group and have a fun vibe together.”
But, like the rest of us, Van Avermaet had to wait with bated breath to see if he had won the lottery to race in this year’s Unbound’s marquee 200-mile event.
“Congratulations, Greg, you’re IN.” Read the email; it was definitely not a marketing gimmick.
“I’m doing Unbound because I like the idea of the race, of course,” Van Avermaet told Cyclingnews last week. “It was not possible to make the combination with my road career because the schedule was full, so I was looking forward to it after my (road) career. The best way to do it, I think, is directly after because then at least you have a little bit of shape,”
“I’m looking forward to doing stuff like this. I will do some gravel races this year, see how it feels, and do stuff I could not do during my road career, some off-road, maybe a triathlon,” the 38-year-old Belgian continued. I will have some fun, and of course, it will hurt a little bit in the legs, but it will be cool.”
Though he’s now making gravel his focus, Van Avermaet is hardly green to the loose roads. Last year, he won a Spanish gravel triathlon called SGRAIL 100, which included an 88-kilometer gravel ride and finished fourth in the 2022 UCI Gravel Worlds.
Alongside Van Avermaet on Team Last Dance will be fellow ex-roadie-turned-gravel pro Petr Vakoč, who raced in the professional ranks for seven seasons, and the filmmaker-slash-bike racer Douwe Doorduin. The team is a joint venture between Doorduin and cycling brand Isadore.
In addition to his Paris-Roubaix and Olympic wins, Van Avermaet’s palmarès include wins at Gent-Wevelgem, Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, the Grand Prix Cicliste de Montréal, and Tirreno-Adriatico, along with a pair of Tour de France stage wins.
His strength as a one-day racer will likely suit the long, demanding days in the saddle required of gravel racers. And though he will be Stateside for Unbound, Van Avermaet said he will focus most of his racing on Europe, in an effort to be close to home and his family.
This year’s Unbound is on Saturday, June 3, in Emporia, Kansas.
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