ANALYSIS | Wout van Aert cannot afford more setbacks if he is to accomplish his potential

I keep debating with myself about where Wout van Aert stands heading into 2026. Injured is probably the best way to describe his current predicament, but he seems relatively upbeat in his recent interviews. When Van Aert so positively about races like the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix, he sounds like a rider who still believes, not one easing himself toward the exit.

This is now the third year in a row in which an injury has bent his career arc. He crashed twice badly in 2024, spent much of 2025 rebuilding from those injuries, and now, in early 2026, he is again dealing with the fallout from another crash, this time in cyclocross. He is 31 years old, has not won a Monument in six years, and lives in the same era as a rival whose palmarès is already historic. The question is no longer whether Van Aert is great. Of course he is. The question is whether greatness, at this point, can still translate into the wins that define careers.

He does not frame his situation in terms of decline, and that matters. When asked to connect his own situation with Simon Yates’ retirement, he was blunt. “Yeah, I think it’s too easy to link these events to each other, I would say.” He added context that often gets lost. “You can also say I’ve been in this team for seven years now, and I’ve been a very happy person, well supported, and always feeling at home. So, yeah, I don’t feel like there’s putting more stress here or whatsoever.”

That is not the language of someone burned out or disconnected. It is also not the language of denial. Van Aert has been careful to resist big conclusions, especially when the conversation turns to motivation.

“I think it’s still just a few riders where it did happen, and there’s still also a lot of riders who are just living their dream life.” Then he made it personal. “At least from a personal side, I’m always happy as a kid when I’m back on the bike, even though it’s a hard period or something.”

Those words matter when weighing whether 2026 can still be a year of redemption. Motivation is not his issue. The body is.

The ankle injury he suffered in cyclocross is not minor, and he has not tried to downplay it. “It’s a complicated injury. It’s a fracture and also a ripped off ligament.” He did not sugar-coat the implications either. “If I was a runner or anything else, I would be out for months.” That is a sobering admission, and it feeds directly into the uncertainty hanging over his spring. “Hopefully, as a cyclist, it will be good enough, but at this point I cannot tell you.”

This is now familiar territory for Van Aert. He has become a rider who repeatedly has to restart, recalibrate, and accept that perfect preparation is a luxury he no longer enjoys. Even his own description of the coming weeks is cautious.

“The first two weeks will be still a question mark.” When he looks toward Omloop, Strade Bianche, and Milano-Sanremo, it is with an asterisk attached. “Even now, even more with injury, will I be, like planned, in really good shape already in Omloop, or am I still a bit on the back foot?”

Feels exactly like it did this time last year doesn’t it!

And yet, there is evidence that the ceiling is still there. In 2025, at the Giro d’Italia, he won an epic stage that reminded everyone how few riders can do what he does when chaos and endurance collide. Later that year, on stage 21 of the Tour de France, he dropped Tadej Pogacar on the final stage and won in Paris.

Those are not the results of a rider fading into irrelevance. Van Aert himself leans on moments like that. “These big moments… they really help me to believe even if not everything is going well.” He did not hesitate to say it plainly. “For example, now I’m still one of the best bike riders in the world, and there will follow moments where I can show it off.”

Belief, however, does not win Monuments on its own. The classics landscape is brutal, and the competition is unforgiving. When asked to name his main rivals, Van Aert did not flinch. “Yeah, Pogacar, Van der Poel and Pedersen probably, yeah.” The subtext is obvious. Mathieu van der Poel looms over every discussion about Van Aert’s legacy.

Van der Poel is on the verge of a record-equalling eighth cyclocross world title and already owns eight Monuments as well as a rainbow jersey on the road too. The contrast is bleak for the Belgian, and has been for some time. Van Aert is often defined by what he has not won rather than what he has. Even he acknowledges the imbalance. “It’s still there, but of course Mathieu’s palmares is a bit bigger than mine.”

Van Aert does of course have a far lager palmares than Van der Poel in grand tours, but for the duo from Belgium and the Netherlands, it is the spring that really counts.

That rivalry, though, has always been more complex than a simple scoreboard. “The rivalry has always been bigger for you guys… than for us.” On the road, Van Aert is right: races rarely come down to just two riders. But when history is written, numbers matter, and right now the numbers favour Van der Poel heavily.

The emotional weight of near-misses still lingers. Asked about Paris-Roubaix and the puncture on Carrefour de l’Arbre in 2023, when his nemesis Van der Poel won for the first time, Van Aert did not hide from it. “Yeah, it was a big disappointment.” Then, characteristically, he refused to dramatise it. “I’m not really busy with lining up or making a list of what’s the biggest disappointment.” The final sentence cut through the composure. “But that was definitely a shit moment, yeah.”

Roubaix remains the axis around which much of this debate turns. Van Aert’s description of the race explains why. “The last hour of the race is almost more like a survival than a real race.” He called it “mythical” and later said, without hesitation, “Arguably it’s the best race in the calendar.” Riders do not talk like that about races they have given up on winning.

There is also a tactical shift underway. His return to Strade Bianche and Milano-Sanremo is not accidental. “That these are really beautiful races that I don’t want to miss for the rest of my career.” He framed it as unfinished business rather than nostalgia. “I always want to go back to a traditional schedule where I am able to fight also for San Remo and Strade Bianche.”

At the same time, he is honest about what has and has not worked. “In 25, it’s fair to say that I was not showing something that I was so much better than I was in the years when I did the full program in March.” That admission matters. It suggests he is not stubbornly clinging to an idea that has failed.

And there is certainly an argument that Van Aert is indeed better suited to the Italian classics, rather than those closer to home.

So can he get back to the heights of 2022? The man that lit up the Tour on countless occasions that summer? The answer depends on which version of Van Aert shows up. If injuries continue to interrupt his build-up, if recovery phases replace training blocks, then time will keep narrowing the window. He admits as much when asked how long he can stay at the top. “As long as I feel like I can be valuable… then I want to keep going.” That is not a promise of dominance; it is a statement of intent.

Family life, age, and repeated crashes do take a toll, even if he does not frame them that way. But there is another side. He is still chasing goals, still talking about Flanders and Roubaix as live ambitions, still winning stages on the biggest days. He is not finished.

Whether he wins another Monument in 2026 may come down to timing as much as talent. A clean spring, even a slightly imperfect one, could be enough if the race breaks right. A single puncture, a single missed training block, will close the door again. In truth, for Van Aert to win, he will need a perfect day, and Van der Poel and Pogacar will both have to suffer an off day. That is the knife-edge he lives on now.

I do not think the heights of 2022 are unreachable. I do think they are harder to reach than ever. Van Aert no longer has margin. What he does have is clarity. He knows what he wants, he knows what hurts, and he knows how little time is wasted on excuses. In a peloton this strong, how many more historic chapters can he write?