Rutger wins his fourth short distance championship title!

After the Wildflower Half Ironman, Rutger has spent 3 weeks preparing himself specifically for the short distance championship in Belgium. It has been 9 months since he last participated in an Olympic distance event, which requires a different type of training.  The whole Arinso-Bik team is quite eager to help Rutger prolong his title for another year, so it is decided to follow a special strategy: Thierry Verbinnen , who is one of the best triathlete swimmers in Belgium, will stay with Rutger, so that he can swim the whole distance in Thierry's feet. That should allow Rutger to minimize his delay with regard to Peter Croes, Axel Zeebroek and Frederik Van Lierde, his main competitors for the title.

The strategy is executed quite well. Rutger is able to stay with Thierry and leaves the water about one minute after his Belgian competitors and some well-known Dutch athletes like Eric Vanderlinden, Raymond Lotz, Huib Rost and Sander Berk.

After a few minutes into the bike leg, Rutger ends up in a group of seven, chasing a leading pack of eleven. Contrary to last year, where he unsuccessfully tried to bridge the gap with the leaders ASAP, Rutger now follows a different strategy: he decides to bike at  a tempo that, if necessary, he could maintain for the whole 40 kilometers. Without much help of the other athletes in the group, he reduces his delay on the leaders to just 20 seconds after the first of 3 bike laps. A little later, after about 20 km, he joins the leaders.  Despite having lacked practice and with a minimal amount of specific short distance training, Rutger nevertheless feels confident he will be able to outrun his Belgian competitors. So he stays with the others for the remaining kilometers on the bike.

Rutger is slow in the transition zone and comes out in 15th position only. However, just as "in the good old times", he then moves forwards. Within a few minutes he has passed everyone except for Eric Vanderlinden, the well known short distance specialist and participant to the first Olympics in Sidney. After one (out of three) laps, Rutger trails the Dutchman with 20 meters, and has 20 seconds of advance himself on Peter Croes, the coming man in short distance triathlon in Belgium. After two laps, nothing has changed between Vanderlinden and Rutger, but his Belgian competitors have now a delay of more than 40 seconds. Rutger now knows that he will win the Belgian championship title. For a while he now tries to join and beat Vanderlinden, so that he would win the race too. However, that proves to be impossible: having specialized now in long distance triathlon, he lacks the explosivity to speed up. From then on, he quietly controls his race and finishes 25 seconds after the winner, but 35 seconds in front of Raymond Lotz, 1 minute before Croes, 1min10 before Huib Rost and 1min30 before Koen Hoeyberghs.