Of dust and dockyards: The strange beauty of Antwerp Port Epic

Strade Bianche, Paris Roubaix, Tour of Flanders: these evocative, rough road races have fanatical followings and are appointment viewing for cycling fans around the world. But elsewhere in the calendar, there are lower-classified races cut from a similar cloth: races like Le Samyn, Tro-Bro León, Clásica Jaén Paraíso Interior, all of which test the riders with cobbles and dirt.

Antwerp Port Epic – a UCI 1.1 classified race around the sprawling port of Antwerp, close to Belgium’s border with the Netherlands, is one such race. The brutality and beauty of this race comes not in climbs – the race starts at seven metres above sea level and finishes two metres lower – but in the surfaces: 42 sectors of unpaved road across 192 km for the men, 40 sectors over 138 km for the women. These sectors are sometimes cobbled, sometimes dirt, sometimes running alongside vast towers of shipping containers and sometimes tracing a course through tunnels of emerald foliage. 

The 2026 edition of the race was conducted in a May heatwave nudging 30° C (86° F), with the bikes a…