Tremelo, in the Hageland just east of Leuven, is home to the Sven Nys Cycling Center, built on the flanks of the Balenberg in the village of Baal after Nys — a rider with an unmatched palmarès in Belgian cyclocross — retired from racing in 2016.
The centre sits on the exact site of the GP Sven Nys, a cyclocross race founded by his fan club and held every New Year's Day since 2000, and the building itself is partly built into the hillside, its exhibition space threading through decades of championship jerseys and race memorabilia.
The Balenberg's original cyclocross course remains freely open to anyone with a bike, alongside newer mountain bike trails with a rock garden, wooden drops, and a pump track — a working track as much as a museum, built for riding rather than just viewing.
For a base, Tremelo offers a genuine off-road counterpart to the road-racing routes found elsewhere in Flemish Brabant — a quiet Hageland village whose entire cycling identity was shaped by one rider's decision to build something permanent on the hill where his own race started.
