"Nobody could've foreseen that Wout would lose that sprint": Jose de Cauwer defends Visma's "greatest blunder of 2025"

Tactically, Team Visma | Lease a Bike is one of the most advanced squads in the peloton. Their execution of race plans is usually flawless, except for one anomaly in 2025. During this year's edition of Dwars door Vlaanderen, the Dutch team was once again on top of its game, riding away from peloton with a group of three Visma riders and only early attacker Neilson Powless could follow. But that's when the men in yellow-black outfits miscalculated and their biggest "blunder" of 2025 came to life.

"Visma | Lease a Bike's strength has always been their commitment to the collective," points out Visma's former rider Stef Clement on De Laatste Etappe show.

"They've capitalized on that brilliantly. But in Dwars Door Vlaanderen, they wanted to give something away to one person - who might even be bigger than the team, Wout van Aert. That's a disservice to their proven tactics. And you should always ensure that at least one person wins." 

Instead of a "dull" game of numbers where Visma make a quick process of the lone Neilson Powless, the leading group rolls towards the finish line in Waregem soundly, without any fireworks. The scene for Visma's biggest defeat of 2025, if not ever, is set.

And so we head towards a reduced sprint. Visma's trio is lined up at the front with the pink jersey of EF Education-EasyPost hiding in Wout Van Aert's shadow. In the Dutch team's car, there were no doubts that Van Aert would win in the sprint, yet...

"And yet I can understand them," José De Cauwer replies. "Wout van Aert is and will remain a figurehead for Visma | Lease a Bike. Both on the team and as team captain. He once gave Christophe Laporte a beautiful victory in Gent-Wevelgem, which he may already regret. Besides, Wout was recovering from an injury and had a very bad fall a year earlier in Dwars Door Vlaanderen."

While the sports directors claimed responsibility for the faux pas, Benoot with Jorgenson later admitted that it was their own call to prepare the sprint for their friend and leader Van Aert.

"That's why I think Tiesj Benoot and Matteo Jorgenson were like, 'Come on, Wout, please. Win. Then we'll just give ourselves away and you're gone.' I can't imagine any of the team directors saying, 'No, we're going to play it safe.' That's saying Wout isn't good enough, while you actually want to give him that confidence."

Not to blame Visma | Lease a Bike entirely, the outcome where Van Aert's legs blow up and Powless actually wins the sprint was far from foreseeable. "Who would have said beforehand that Wout would lose that sprint? Nobody. They'd have been right."

Finally, De Cauwer returns to Van Aert's palmares. Despite having finished near the top of UCI ranking multiple years, the Belgian is yet to win a Monumental Classic other than Milano-Sanremo in 2020. For one of the three best cobbled specialists of our generation, it would be a terrible way to conclude the career, not having won either the Tour of Flanders or Paris-Roubaix at least once.

"And it's still to come for Wout, right? That big victory in the Tour of Flanders or Paris-Roubaix. Imagine Wout van Aert having to retire from cycling without having won either of those."