"It's worth it to be patient" - Wout van Aert ends six month wait for a win with stage 3 success at the Vuelta a Espana

After nine stages of the Tour de France in his career, Wout van Aert can now call himself a stage winner of the Vuelta a Espana also after a powerful display of sprinting in the finale of 3 at the 2024 edition of the Spanish Grand Tour.

"That's nice that it works out like that. It's worth it to be patient," the Team Visma | Lease a Bike superstar reflects afterwards having been made to wait nearly six months for a victory, dating all the way back to Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne in February. "It's been a while but this feels so good!"

After narrowly missing out to Kaden Groves in the finale of stage 2, this time around Van Aert was able to get the best of his Australian sprint rival. Whilst the day before, Groves took Van Aert's wheel, this time around the roles were reversed. "It was my goal to do the opposite," the Belgian explains. "I wanted to use my power and I think I surprised him by going even before 200m. It was slightly uphill but with a lot of speed so the perfect sprint for me."

"My confidence was quite good. Yesterday I felt good on the stage and today again even though it was even warmer. The team was so strong and we had the whole race in control and they dropped me in the perfect position in the end, so yeah, this gave me the confidence to finish it off," he concludes his assessment. "Unfortunately, the fun is over now. Tomorrow I will be happy to give the role of leader of the team to Sepp Kuss and Cian Uijtdebroeks. There is a super hard climb and that will be the first test for the GC guys and for me it will be really hard to keep the jersey so I'll try to enjoy it one more time."