"It's mission accomplished" - Wout van Aert ticks every box on Giro d'Italia debut

Wout van Aert entered the Giro d'Italia right after an illness that derailed the form he had in the spring, and the first days of the race were very tough on him as he missed out on every opportunity to win. However the whole race for Team Visma | Lease a Bike was turned around when he thrived in Siena beating Isaac del Toro - two weeks later, he would help Simon Yates do the very same thing in the mountains. .

"It's like a ketchup bottle, when it's almost finished, you keep shaking and shaking. Nothing happens but then suddenly everything comes out at once," van Aert said in an interview with Cyclingnews. "That's what happened at our Giro. We came here with three leaders and all three were successful".

Van Aert took a victory (although two second places behind Mads Pedersen will have come as a disappoinment), helped Olav Kooij to two sprint wins and Simon Yates to the GC win. He was directly involved in every single one of them. "It's been a crazy 24 hours since Simon decided to turn everything upside down. We were really focused to finish it off and win with Olav".

Van Aert is only a recent teammate of Yates, and the two actually only began racing together for the very first time here at the Corsa Rosa. But the Belgian was thrilled with what happened this weekend. "It was the first time I've seen Simon so emotional. He's a relaxed guy but you could really see that it means so much to him. What he did on the Colle delle Finestre was special."

Above all, it was a massive psychological boost for the Belgian as well, who experienced a spring full of disappointments against stronger competition. "The start of the Giro wasn't a nightmare for us but at that point we were struggling. But in the end it's been a brilliant three weeks. It's mission accomplished for us."