“Again on my favorite horse”: Wout van Aert trains on a racing bike for the first time and makes a coffee stop with Jan Bakelants

Wout van Aert is gradually becoming a professional cyclist again. The Belgian from Visma-Lease a Bike cycled outside again earlier this week, but on Friday he also made the Kempen roads unsafe together with Jan Bakelants. This time not on the gravel bike or mountain bike, but on his trusted racing bike.

After previous excursions with the mountain bike and gravel bike, Van Aert made a trip of 96.4 kilometers on his “normal” aero bike (the Cervélo S5) on Friday together with his ex-teammate Bakelants. “Once again on my favorite horse,” he wrote on Instagram. Good for exactly three hours of exercise, although this was interrupted by a coffee stop. “You can’t stay down,” he wrote on Strava.

It was not the 29-year-old Belgian’s first training outside. Last Wednesday he clocked in at 30.3 kilometers on the mountain bike. With 93 kilometers, he made his longest ride on Tuesday since returning to cycling. In the area around his hometown Herentals he was able to enjoy the spring sun for a total of two hours and 48 minutes.

The leader of Team Visma | Lease a Bike had a hard fall during the Flemish spring classic and suffered fractures to the collarbone, sternum and ribs and a bruised lung. The Kempen native subsequently indicated that he would not be able to start in the Tour of Italy, which starts on May 4 in Venaria Reale, in Piedmont. He originally wanted to participate in the Giro for the first time, but appeared not to have recovered from the consequences of his fall to be able to prepare properly.