"I was too eager to win" - Wout van Aert admits big mistake and blame for Visma's Dwars door Vlaanderen humiliation

Wout van Aert is a rider with great history and great ambitions. Entering the 2026 season, the Team Visma | Lease a Bike rider is going to be 31 years old but continues to aim towards potential victories at the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix. However, he adds Strade Bianche into his list of goals for next spring. Additionally, he has also discussed the Visma blunder at Dwars door Vlaanderen 2025, where he admits responsibility over the team's defeat against Neilson Powless.

"It's true that I haven't had the most successful year of my career, but I felt that my victories have left their mark. I finished fourth in the Tour of Flanders, but I felt I had given my all," van Aert said in an extensive interview with TuttoBiciWeb. Van Aert's season had three peaks, with fourth places in Flanders and Roubaix; the Giro where he won a mythical stage in Siena and helped Simon Yates to the overall win; and the Tour de France where he won the final stage in Paris after dropping Tadej Pogacar. Not his best year, but he's proven that he is still capable of bringing in big victories, and his preparation towards the cobbled monuments looked perfect.

In 2026 however he won't follow the same plan, but he recalls his Flanders race in which he came very close to the podium. "I gave it my all, as always, and as always, I rode to win. I attacked in the finale, even though Tadej and Mathieu were certainly stronger. And it didn't bother me, and I accepted that I was at this level. Being close to riders like them is important, and that now makes me enjoy my victories even more."

"In 2024, when I crashed twice (Dwars door Vlaanderen and Vuelta a España, ed.), I watched all the major races on television: the Classics, the World Championships. I was there at the Tour de France, but not at the level I'd hoped. That horrible feeling of not even being able to compete made me realize today how important it is to me to still be in this sport,"he admits. "Everything changed last spring. I no longer dared to push the pace. I was torn between the relief of not having crashed and the frustration of not being in the right place".

Positioning issues became a real problem from van Aert from the summer of 2025 onwards, and in a peloton where risks are higher than ever, it can become an issue for him. But over the past year and a half he has also worked on himself psychologically, and remains as motivated as ever to perform. "At a certain point, I realized that riding anonymously in the group didn't make me happy. Sometimes I was able to help the team, other times not even that. Today I know very clearly what racing means to me: reaching my maximum level and giving my all."

The 2024 DDV saw him crash at high speed, which ended his spring and hampered his Tour de France preparation as well. In 2025 Visma did everything perfect, attacking the race as a group and having three riders in a group of four up front. But the decision was made not to try to win with the team, but with Van Aert, on paper in a sprint. "I was extremely disappointed because I hadn't been true to myself by choosing to put everything into my sprint. I was too eager to win and I was afraid my teammates would take that opportunity away from me if they attacked," the Belgian admits.

It was his mistake, and the Dutch team's lowest moment of the year perhaps. Tiesj Benoot and Matteo Jorgenson were third and fourth behind him. "It helped me a lot that no one was angry or disappointed. For them, everything that had happened made sense," he shared however.

"People might think that winning isn't that important to me anymore, but I still want to raise my hands in victory. But it's also true that in that particular race, we should have behaved differently." He did end up showing his best legs in the following weeks in the monuments, and he continues to believe that scoring a big win there is possible, even with the presence of Mathieu van der Poel and Tadej Pogacar in the peak of their career.

"If I could no longer believe I could win the Tour of Flanders, then perhaps only three riders in the world can still do it. It's very difficult to win, of course, and the same goes for Roubaix, but these are logical goals in my career," he explains. "I'm still very close to achieving this result. I have to believe I can reach a higher level than last year. All the conditions are there to be stronger".

"In 2025, if Mathieu had been closer to Tadej, they could have neutralized each other. They often work well together, but in the last ten kilometers it was different. The worst-case scenario for me was for one of them to attack after the Paterberg and create a significant gap. The main thing for me was to stay with them. But in the future, there could be an edition where they'll look at each other and then they could neutralize each other, and my opportunity could arise."

Van Aert's victory at the Giro d'Italia this year was the evidence of his performance in the short and steep climbs, something which perhaps he has struggled a bit more in recent years. He beat a peak form Isaac del Toro on the Piazza del Campo. "Few victories have given me so much emotion. I still get chills just talking about it". After falling ill following the spring classics, he entered the Giro in low form, but had a magical day which saw him take his first-ever Giro d'Italia win.

"It was a difficult period that ultimately turned into something positive. I was having a good spring, but I was missing that finishing touch. I had hoped to start the Giro with a stage win, but I got sick before the Grande Partenza. I was so weakened that on the fifth day I wondered if it was worth continuing. The Strade Bianche stage? I really didn't think it would be my day. My family was at the finish line, and I hadn't seen them in ten days. Siena is also where my road cycling career began. The racing conditions there helped me, and I needed it because I wasn't at my best. Sometimes, I think things are meant to be this way, that it's written in the stars. What I felt that day, I can't describe."

It was a victory that made such a mark in him that the desire to win the Italian classic, in which he succeeded back in 2020, has returned. Van Aert will race it for the first time in years, which also means he will follow a different schedule in the upcoming spring ahead of the monuments.

"Being at Strade Bianche in 2026 means changing my plans. I'm usually at altitude at that time of year, and it would mean changing my preparation. I never said I didn't want to race this race again. Racing Strade will require a different approach, but we can work on it," he concluded.