"His wife called and asked, ‘Did you see that?’" - Wout van Aert on the moment he saw Jonas Vingegaard's Tour de France crash
CyclingTuesday, 28 July 2026 at 15:40
Wout van Aert watched the Tour de France from afar after missing out through injury. The Visma | Lease a Bike rider returns to racing this week at the Tour of Denmark after injuries from a training crash ultimately ended his Tour ambitions.
Crashing in early June, van Aert started the Tour Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes and even picked up a stage win. However, things quickly took a turn after he left the race due to recurring pain in his elbow, an area he injured in a training crash before the race.
Tests in belgium put his Tour de France in doubt as wounds on his his elbow became infected. With a race against time and his preparation severely disruptd, the decision was made for the Paris-Roubaix winner to stay at home.
Van Aert's presence was missed at the Tour, and the Belgian felt the same. He found it difficult to watch the opening team time trial stage before growing into enjoying the spectacle from the outside.
"I found the team time trial on the first day the hardest. I wanted to be there anyway, and then we actually won," van Aert told Het Nieuwsblad.
Wout van Aert on stage 5 of the 2026 Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes
Van Aert accepts reality of missing Tour de France
"After that, I accepted the reality of the situation and didn’t dwell on it too much anymore. After seven years of the Tour de France, it’s also nice to be able to have a completely different July for a change."
"But the Tour is, of course, the Tour. It’s not that hard to follow it. Just open your phone in the evening and you’re right in the thick of it, whether you want to be or not. I did make a point of watching 'Vive Le Vélo' a few times."
On stage 15, as Visma pushed hard to tee up a potential attack from Jonas Vingegaard, the Dane suffered a crash in a corner. Second place in the general classification at the time, Vingegaard was hoping to mount a challenge at Tadej Pogacar on the day's mountain-top finish.
Van Aert described finding out after receiving a call from the team doctor's wife about the crash, leading to him tuning in to witness the aftermath.
“I was just in the car with the team doctor after a training session when it happened. His wife called and asked, ‘Did you see that?’ We immediately turned on a live stream. The rest of the car ride was very quiet.
"I was watching from a distance, so I'm not 100 percent sure what was going on within the team, but despite Pogacar's dominance, I felt that we still had the morale and confidence to go all out. Which is exactly what we were doing in that stage."
Van Aert thinks the crash impacted the future of the race, noting that Visma would have continued to mount a challenge towards Pogacar's dominance.
He added: "But also for the Tour. Pogacar’s main challenger is out of the race. In recent years, our team has been pretty much the only one racing to win rather than settling for places of honour."
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Van Aert on Vingegaard nightime test
In terms of the night time doping tests of Vingegaard and Pogacar on the eve of the crash, the Belgian believes that it affected the race and could have been a contributing factor to the crash.
“That surprised me. I’ve never experienced that myself. If anti-doping agencies have evidence that that timing is necessary to detect certain substances. I’m definitely in favour of proper testing.”
"But Jonas was the only one checked at 2 am. Not a single other competitor was woken up at the same time. That affects the race one way or another, and I absolutely cannot accept that. There simply has to be a clear standard. Now someone has been singled out who—no matter how you look at it—had a disrupted night’s sleep. That had an impact on the race," he declared.
Gavin QuinnCycling Journalist
Gavin Quinn is a cycling journalist and ultra-distance cyclist with a BA in Journalism from Dublin City University. Formerly the Press & Communications Officer for Cycling Ireland, Gavin has worked inside the national team at the World Championships and has reported for the Irish Mirror, Mirror UK, and The42.
His expertise is backed by elite-level access, having interviewed stars like Sam Bennett and Ben Healy, as well as immense personal endurance. In 2025, he completed a 12,000km solo cycle from Ireland to Vietnam, following a 4,600km tour across Europe. From the cobbles of Paris-Roubaix to the gradients of the Tourmalet, Gavin’s writing focuses on the "romance and brutality" of the sport. Having visited 50+ countries, he brings a global, cultural perspective to his coverage of the pro peloton for CyclingUpToDate.
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