“I would rather not choose” - Wout van Aert doesn’t believe his Montmartre win was his best

Nearly a week has passed since Wout van Aert stunned the cycling world with a remarkable victory on stage 21 of the 2025 Tour de France. In a dramatic finale that saw him drop Tadej Pogacar on the steep climbs of Montmartre, something no rider had done on a climb in two years, Van Aert claimed his tenth career stage win at the Tour. It had been three years since his last, but the wait was worth it. While he wasn’t quite at the peak of his powers across the whole race, the Belgian’s performance in Paris was a glimpse of something close.

The win came after a challenging season for Van Aert, as after his 2024 campaign had been derailed by crashes, and 2025 didn’t start any smoother. He entered the spring lacking sharpness, form, and confidence, and found himself under scrutiny from the Belgian press. Once again, van Aert was forced to watch on as his nemesis Mathieu van der Poel dominated the classics, and the Belgian is still waiting for his first cobbled monument win.

Even in May, despite winning a demanding Strade-Bianche style stage at the Giro d’Italia, there were still doubts about whether he could ever get back to his best. But on Sunday, he silenced those doubts by riding away from the Tour’s strongest climbers on a hilltop finish that no one saw coming.

Sporza asked Van Aert to rank his five best Tour stage wins from a pre-selected shortlist, which included his Montmartre victory. The request was met with hesitation. “This is really difficult,” Van Aert said. “I would rather not choose,” he added, making clear that each of his victories carried unique meaning.

However, he eventually did make a choice: stage 4 of the 2022 Tour de France in Calais stood out slightly above the rest. That day, he finally broke through after finishing second on each of the first three stages, and he did so wearing the yellow jersey.

The 2022 Tour remains a high point in Van Aert’s career, arguably the very highest. He won three stages, dominated in various terrains, and was instrumental in teammate Jonas Vingegaard’s overall victory. That version of Van Aert, he admitted, may have been his finest.

Still, he couldn’t separate the rest of his victories. They all tied for second in his mind, a nod to the depth of a career that now includes some of the most memorable wins of the modern Tour.