“First attempt to hold my bars again” - Wout van Aert rides 67km days after infected elbow ended Tour de France hopes

Wout van Aert is back on the bike less than a week after undergoing surgery on the infected elbow that forced him out of the 2026 Tour de France.

The Team Visma | Lease a Bike rider completed a 67.6km charity group ride at an average speed of 30.6kph, sharing the update on Strava with a short but telling message: “First attempt to hold my bars again.”

For Van Aert, this was not a return to full training or a sign that the Tour decision can be revisited.

His July plans are over. But after a week dominated by infection, surgery and withdrawal, a controlled ride for charity marks the first visible step in his latest recovery.

Van Aert’s Tour de France withdrawal was confirmed after an elbow wound from a training crash on his time trial bike worsened and became infected. The injury had already affected him during the Tour Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes, where Visma’s medical staff removed him from the race and brought him back to Belgium.

Van Aert then underwent urgent surgery on Monday to clean the wound and avoid sepsis. That left Visma without one of their most important Tour de France riders before the Grand Depart and ended Van Aert’s run of appearances at the race, with the Belgian missing the Tour for the first time since his debut in 2019.

His return came in a very different setting from race preparation. Van Aert joined a group ride for the Olivia Fund, a Kempen-based organisation working in the fight against childhood cancer. By his standards, the pace was modest. After the severity of the past week, the distance still stood out.

The image of Van Aert back on the bike so soon after surgery will be a welcome one for Visma and Belgian cycling fans. The wound was serious enough to end his Tour de France hopes, but his first ride since the operation suggests the early stage of recovery is moving in the right direction.

The coming weeks will now decide how quickly Van Aert can rebuild. His Tour is gone, and Visma’s plans around Jonas Vingegaard must continue without one of their most versatile riders, but the sight of Van Aert holding the bars again gives his summer a first positive turn after a brutal setback.

For now, the comeback is small but symbolic: 67.6km, a charity ride, and the first sign that Van Aert has started moving beyond the injury that ended his Tour de France before it began.