“You can’t stay down, can you?” Wout van Aert (29) jokingly posted it a week ago on the sports app Strava, with some photos of his training tour with ex-cyclist Jan Bakelants. After a three-hour ride, the two had 96.4 kilometers on the clock. A broken collarbone, a broken sternum and seven battered ribs: with such a medical bulletin, an ordinary mortal would shuffle forward one step at a time four weeks later, but Van Aert was back on the bike.
“Confrontational,” he calls it Road to resilience: inside the beehive, “that you may be in the best shape of your life being knocked back to the worst possible shape.” The documentary about the classic spring of Visma-Lease a bike, which the team put online this week, shows that after his fall in Dwars door Vlaanderen, “things are going quite well considering the circumstances”.
A habit
The Kempen resident is recovering in LAB Antwerp under the wings of Thijs Herstens, the physiotherapist with whom he started working intensively after his previous horror crash in the Tour time trial in Pau in 2019. Then several muscles in his right upper leg were torn, today it seems recovery faster. Although he still has a way to go before all the injuries are fully resolved, he can look towards the future again.
In the mid-season there seemed to be no doubt: the Giro would be Van Aert’s destination, the Tour de Francehe happily left it to others. “The Tour is never boring, but at a certain point it becomes a habit,” said the team during the team presentation at the end of December. “It was the moment to do something different.”
After five participations, nine stage victories, a green jersey and two overall victories with the team, he was looking forward to it. Van Aert was visibly happy that he could ride a Grand Tour in a different way. The intention was to win as many stages as possible in Italy, and not to run out of steam on other days. That plan was scrapped on March 27, together with his ambition to put the Tour of Flanders or Paris-Roubaix on his honors list.
Do not wring out
One big goal remains: the Olympic diptych, with first the time trial (on July 27, six days after the end of the Tour) and seven days later the road race (August 3). A look at recent history shows this La Grande Boucle in the past was an ideal stepping stone towards Olympic success: Samuel Sanchez (Beijing 2008), Alexandre Vinoukorov (London 2012), Greg Van Avermaet (Rio 2016) and Richard Carapaz (Tokyo 2021) all had the Tour de France in their legs when they won the road race at the Games.
Visma-Lease a bike confirms that Van Aert’s recovery is going well, but at the same time indicates that no competition program has yet been drawn up. It is certain that his presence in the Tour would be an extra asset for the Dutch team, especially because it remains to be seen whether leader Jonas Vingegaard will recover in time from his blow in the Basque Country. And just because you start the Tour doesn’t mean you have to finish it empty. Those who can dose and select their rides will find the necessary training volume and the equally necessary intensity to take on the Olympic challenge.
