"He needs to pick up the bike-handling skills again so he doesn't fall anymore" - Experts urge Wout van Aert to ride full cyclocross campaign this winter
CyclingWednesday, 11 September 2024 at 09:26
For Wout van Aert, 2024 has been a year consistently disrupted by crashes and subsequent injuries. After showing signs of returning to his best form at the Vuelta a Espana, this Belgian once again was once again a victim of a crash.
"Of course he's disappointed. He'll be satisfied somewhere and if he goes to the Giro next year, he'll have won stages in all three of the Grand Tours," Eurosport pundit Jan Hermsen reflects. "But of course this is a shitty end to the year. His goal was to become world champion or European champion. We've seen the best Wout van Aert of the entire year and that ends against a Spanish wall. That's really sour."
Was the Wout van Aert we saw at the 2024 Vuelta a Espana the best version of the Belgian though? Jeroen Vanbelleghem isn't so sure. "He said himself he was very good, but not at the level of the Tour a few years ago," the expert analyses. "You also saw that in a few mountain stages where he had to drop off quite early given the group that was still together. Then in the Tour he went much further along.”
“He was getting really good and it's such a shame," Vanbelleghem continues however, well aware that the crash of a Van Aert is also a big blow to Belgian hopes of winning either the European title or the Rainbow Jersey. "He was really getting ready for the World Championship. It has unfortunately gone this way and it has been a terrible season for him."
But why is Van Aert such a crash magnet? According to Bobbie Traksel, the multi-discipline star's bike handling abilities might have trailed off a bit in recent season. “I actually hope he will ride a full cyclocross season again," says Traksel. "He needs to pick up the bike-handling skills again so he doesn't fall anymore. I'm referring to the fall in the Tour de France. That would never happen to a real cross rider. I do think this is going to take a little longer and it's quite a mental tick.”
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- It’s the kind of thing Tadej would have tried too ;-) one of the reasons I think they won’t get along very long, too much alike in some aspects.Mistermaumau21-04-2025
- Also, it seems fans and he have narrowed down strategies for winning to one, doing long-range solos. Maybe in-race he should re-evaluate whether that strategy is advantageous under actual conditions, like with a tiring headwind and two phenomenal chasers working behind him, surely he was made aware of that pretty quick?Mistermaumau21-04-2025
- I don’t think he is very well advised in-house, whether that is because they’re happy for him to do things this way or whether he just isn’t good at taking advice, I don’t know and it probably doesn’t matter, not until he will reach a “bad” patch because as many before him discovered, it can be very long to climb out a bad patch if you don’t know or accept what will help you get through it.Mistermaumau21-04-2025
- Well yes, and sometimes that makes it more sometimes less interesting. Problem for spectator is you can never know in advance :-(Mistermaumau21-04-2025
- It's funny. but I didn't see any men racing in the women's race.
santiagobenites21-04-2025 - Remco making stupid crass coments again. I would have won myself if i had been racing lol. As to putting Remco at Pogs level at grand tours he is no where near in the high mountains. He won the Vuelta yes good result but there was no big hitters there . Needs to mature up quite a bit and classics are no where same as grand tours.paultryan200221-04-2025
- Crash or not to get stuck on the front in the lead up to the line and then try to blow Pocagar and Skjelmose off from the front, in the sprint was a big mistake. He went far too soon and ran out of legs. A lot of sprints are won from the front, but a lot more are lost by doing that. He must have thought he had the legs but it backfired on him.Cyclingsbestfan21-04-2025
- Exactly this. A day or so before the race an analyst (I forget who) strongly advised that Pogacar should take a longer break after Roubais, and skip Amstel, or suffer the consequences. Turns out they were right.Hill3321-04-2025
- A rather picky argument. MVDP has been busy at top level since December, kind of normal he takes a break, especially to be back in the height of summer to work for another. What’s with challenging Tadej in the hills, does Tadej challenge him in cyclocross, or mtb??? Each to his own. Every year when riders start racing again we’re hesitant to expect much due to lack of racing environment experience and need to build up yet for Remco now he is expected (including by Tadej) to be at his top right from the start? Tadej, personally added to his program when many would (as usual advise him against), he has conflicting interests, wants to win things important to him but doesn’t focus on achieving that and imo, he’s kind of fallen into a trap by having underestimated how strong some others really are. He’s phenomenal but he can’t beat everyone at everything so like everyone else, at some point he will have to learn to pick more specifically because winning IS important to him. As everyone admits nobody would have expected Skjelmose to win in advance, nobody even entertained the thought Tadej might have had his dose and that someone like Skjelmose could pressure him (and if he’d ridden smarter he might still have won in a sprint). I have no problem giving the guy a break and am not critical of the condition he’s shown but I won’t give those a break who hype him up interminably and then only discover they need to look at reasons for underperformance when they are constantly reminded by others in advance that those should always be considered before expecting results. I don’t recall any of his fans ever accepting the argument that maybe at some point he’ll overdo it, the discussion is regular, the way he rode the Giro was not conducive to achieving the double and in the end he succeeded partly because JV wasn’t up to scratch at that moment but maybe Tadej had already reckoned with that, who knows?). The fact is, he was disappointed but had only himself to blame, I mean c’mon, that wind didn’t come out of nowhere. I’m no hater, just don’t find him more appreciable than many others who make just as much effort and believe me, Tadej’s main motivation is not to entertain you, he’s no Sagan, he just likes racing, the fact that entertains people is unimportant to him other than that it pays a good salary, or was downing his drink on the podium (which the other two obviously considered a bit uncomfortably) an effort to entertain, if so, I fear it was probably entertaining, maybe even encouraging the kind of spectators that have begun to become media worthy.Mistermaumau21-04-2025
- Well.. sorry, I'm not sorry.. I'd rather listen to the world champion's explanation for his own show of weakness, than accept the post-mortem views of an amateur armchair pundit.. Give the guy a break.. Skjelmose's last race was Paris-Nice, where he abandoned after a crash.. Remco is just on his 2nd race of the season, fresh from having won the previous week's De Bravantse-Pijl race. Tadej battled MVDP in MSR, Flanders, P-R finishing 2nd, 1st, 2nd.. MVDP has taken an early vacation, not wishing to contest hilly races against TP in the heat of summer. If Remco and Mattias were not in this race, Tadej would have won again, to the eternal consternation of haters. Even world champions have an off-day, especially after the bone-jarring efforts of the cobbles season. Let's just appreciate these athlete's efforts to entertain us.. and hope that none of them get in harm's way.FredMan21-04-2025