"After all those setbacks, it’s been hard to keep finding the motivation" - Wout van Aert's wife opens up on Visma star's injury struggles

Wout van Aert is making a Giro d'Italia debut this month, and despite reports to the contrary, looked in near peak form on the opening stage, only being beaten in a photo finish by Mads Pedersen. Whilst reports of Van Aert's demise have been greatly exaggerated, there is truth in the fact that the Belgian has been struggling for a couple of years now with regular crashes and injuries.

In conversation with Het Nieuwsblad, Van Aert's wife - Sarah de Bie, has been open and honest about the effects that all the injuries and crashes have had on the psyche of the Team Visma | Lease a Bike star. “Wout wasn’t able to train as much, so there was more family time, which was of course really fun for the kids," De Bie says of the most recent of these, a short illness pre-Giro d'Italia. "But for Wout, it was crap, if I may use a strong word. That forced rest isn’t really rest when you’ve got kids around. I don’t need to explain that to other parents.”

Like Van Aert himself though, De Bie is keen to play down talk that this illness with affect his Giro performances. “It wasn’t easy, but given the circumstances, I think he, and we, made the best of it,” she explains. “In the end, we decided to return home a bit earlier, which made things a little hectic. Not the most fun choice, but definitely the right one, even though that extra travel day wasn’t ideal either. But when you’re sick, you really just want to see your own doctor.”

As mentioned though, there have been an alarming number of setbacks for Van Aert over the last few years, with 2024 being especially brutal with a number of big crashes disrupting an otherwise relatively successful campaign.

"If Wout, after all those setbacks, can’t immediately bounce back mentally for once, then it’s up to me and the people around him to respond quickly. Of course, you worry, but I’ve learned to look ahead with a positive mindset. And yes, an illness is a different kind of challenge than a crash,” says De Bie. "After all those setbacks, it’s been hard to keep finding the motivation every time, and winning there would have meant a lot. Wout puts a lot of pressure on himself as it is, and I won’t pretend otherwise: what you journalists write and say adds to that. Wout reads it, or it finds its way to him one way or another.”