Nathan Van Hooydonck thinks there was more than enough criticism of Wout Van Aert: "In Flanders we honour our heroes, but as soon as things go less well, we are also good at razing them to the ground"
Cycling
After the failed Dwars door Vlaanderen, leader Wout Van Aert took all the blame on himself. He said he had been selfish and had thought too much of himself. But the approval of the tactic to wait for Van Aert's spring came from the team car...
Van Aert's former teammate Nathan Van Hooydonck afterwards said the coin may have two sides. "I wasn't reassured, because I didn't know what Wout had said on the radio," he says on the podcast De Rode Lantaarn.
That doesn't change the fact that Van Hooydonck also thought that Van Aert would finish off the sprint. "But you prefer to be alone, because then you are just sure. That is also how we have always approached races. Wout also said afterwards that that is the way of racing in our team. It has an impact on the team, but also on himself. It is not who he is."
Van Hooydonck makes the connection with criticism from the media. "Then you see what the pressure from the media does to a person. Wout van Aert is also only human. And that does something to you. It is sometimes quite difficult to be Wout van Aert, I think."
"In Flanders we can honour our heroes, but as soon as things go less well, we in Flanders are also good at razing them to the ground. That is not always correct. Criticism is possible, but sometimes it should also be taken into account how something like that lands with the person concerned."
Van Hooydonck understood the team's decision. "Maybe the team should have gone against it, but if you consider what he's been through in the past year... The riders wanted him to succeed, but so did the rest of the staff. If I had been in the leading group, I wouldn't have even questioned it. He's such a leader. Everything he said, I just did it, because I had enormous faith in him to win the race."
Van Aert flipped the switch on Thursday with a Flat White (coffee) and a brownie. "There are also a lot of things that we can pull ourselves up on as a team. We made mistakes in the final, but we also rode a fantastic race. We dictated the race. We've only done that once before this year: the echelons stage in Paris-Nice. From Thursday onwards, we have to pull ourselves up on that."
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- You can enjoy it by all means but will you also take responsibility for the consequences of encouraging it through that? Because we all pay the price of the way it affects people, moods, behaviour, illness, violence, crime, social degeneration, etc, no real good comes of it or what do you feel there is to gain from it other than experiencing a momentary emotional high some might not be able to achieve any other way?Mistermaumau12-04-2025
- There's no reason we can't live in the real world while enjoying the doped up sport.Veganpotter12-04-2025
- Tadej definitely wasn't terribly out of the ordinary as a junior. Just goes to show what great coaching and a proper "supplement" regiment can turn someone into.Veganpotter12-04-2025
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- Veganpotter, I’d take that as a compliment, like not knowing how to manufacture a bomb :-)Mistermaumau12-04-2025
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- Firstly, it’s not them, it’s their doctors and consultants and people contacting them trying to sell their wares. Secondly, now that there’s money in the sport, they can afford it, and peddlers see lucrative opportunities to separate them from their earnings, not very complicated to follow, in fact, wasn’t the whole modern thing started by someone having access to an oversized sponsor budget as there was a good marketing alignment of nationalistic and feelgood stories?Mistermaumau12-04-2025