One week after winning his fourth Belgian Championship title in the Olympic distance, Rutger starts in the ETU Prestige short distance triathlon of Zundert (The Netherlands). It is well known to his supporters that Zundert is not his preferred race: he has participated already several times and up to now his best result ever was a 23d place in 2002. However, the race with many international short distance specialists fits well in his training scheme. This time Rutger will not get any help from other Arinso-Bik athletes, since all of his colleagues will start in the Belgian Superprestige event.

As usual in Zundert, the swimming leg does not work out very well: Rutger leaves the water 2'25" after the leaders.  Once on the bike, he quickly passes a few of his fellow athletes and as such creates a third group. Unfortunately nobody is willing to help him chasing the leaders and that, of course, proofs to be deadly: a leading group of 9 comes into the transition zone with 3 minutes of advance on a second pack of 13 and 6 minutes before Rutger's group.

While he already knows that a good final result is now impossible, Rutger wants to show that his running is still at par with the Olympic distance specialists. He starts running in the 23d position and finishes the 10km in 18th position. More importantly though is his split time of 30 minutes and 55 seconds, same time as Dimitri Gaag. Only Richard Allen of Great Brittany does better with 30'42". This proves that, despite his focus on long distance triathlon,  Rutger has not lost his basic running speed.