Olympics Country Profile: Belgium looking to continue cycling dominance and win a hockey gold

Belgium started taking part from the year 1900, and has won 148 medals ever since.

By Aaryanshi Mohan | Jul 20, 2021 | 2 Min Read follow icon Follow Us

Belgium has had a rich history of taking part in the Olympics. It started taking part from the year 1900, and has won 148 medals ever since. It also hosted the Olympics in 1920, in Antwerp. The games were known as the Games of the VII Olympiad. The National Olympic Committee for Belgium was created and recognized in 1906.

In March 1912, the bid on the behalf of Belgium to host the 1920 Summer Olympics was made. Baron Edouard de Laveleye, president of the Belgian Olympic Committee and of the Royal Belgian Football Association made the bid. No fixed host city was proposed at the time.

Cycling its way to glory

In its history of participating in the Games, Belgium has won 26 medals in cycling. 7 gold medals, 8 sliver medals and 11 bronze.

Even for the Tokyo Olympics, Wout van Aert will be riding for Belgium. Van Aert (Jumbo-Visma) is likely going to be the country’s leader in the road race. He is also one of the top athletes who could get gold for the country. Belgium will be the defending champions in the Games this year as Greg Van Avermaet (Ag2r-Citroen) took the gold medal five years ago in Rio, Brazil.

Van Aert is in great shape after Amstel Gold Race in a dramatic photo finish with Tom Pidcock (Ineos Grenadiers. HE has had an amazing performance in Tirreno-Adriatico, winning a bunch sprint on stage one. He was able to beat Filippo Ganna (Ineos Grenadiers) and Stefan Küng (Groupama-FDJ) in the time trial on the final stage and came second to Tadej Pogacar (UAE Team Emirates).

Van Aert will be a top contender heading into both events and will have a lot of support around him as well. Former European time trial champion Remco Evenepoel (Deceuninck – Quick-Step) is could be alongside Van Aert for the time trial. 

The rest of the squad for the men’s road race has not yet been announced. The women’s side is sending Lotte Kopecky (Liv Racing), Valerie Demey (Liv Racing) and Julie Van de Velde (Jumbo-Visma) with Van de Velde also riding the time trial.

Hockey team looking to perform better this year

As far as hockey is concerned, this year the Belgian team is looking to better their Rio 2016 silver. The silver winning hockey team will be going into the Olympics as country favourites, having won the Hockey World Cup.

Since Rio, Belgium has gone from strength to strength, taking the World Cup in India. They, then conquered the first-ever European title in 2019ad won this year’s ProLeague, a round-robin competition involving the world’s top nine hockey-playing nations