"They would mean everything to me" - Wout van Aert on winning Roubaix and Flanders; Beating Pogacar at Tour de France

Wout van Aert is a tremendously talented rider and one with a lot of history in cycling. This year he only won twice, but both were perhaps the most spectacular stages of both Giro d'Italia and Tour de France - in Siena and Paris. He recalls these, as well as his everlasting motivation to win a cobbled monument, and more.

"I feel like I've been chasing those races my whole career. They would really be the icing on the cake. They would mean everything to me," van Aert said regarding the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix, in words to the New York Times.

He has been close on several occasions, but having rivals such as Mathieu van der Poel and Tadej Pogacar at their absolute prime has not allowed him to be victorious in them - whilst bad luck was often in the mix too in recent years. He did win the 2020 Milano-Sanremo and also Strade Bianche in the past, but it's the two cobbled classics that attract him the most.

"In my youth, I watched those races and thought: I want to do that too. Now I'm closer than ever, but the pressure remains. The past two years, I started as the top favorite, and that's sometimes difficult," he admits. But on the cobbles the Belgian continues to thrive, and whilst he wasn't able to take a big win in the spring, during the Tour he took the win on the final stage after dropping none other than Tadej Pogacar on the cobbled climb to Montmartre.

That was perhaps the highlight of the Belgian's season, and he recalls the ascent in which he dropped the sport's top figure: "At that moment, I could barely hear anything on the radio, just the adrenaline and the battle with myself".

Van Aert is a rider that has crashed and got injured often recently however, 2024 being the prime example with a major crash in the spring and then another at La Vuelta. "Every injury gets worse as you get older, and with a family, your motivation changes too". These month-long breaks also affect his evolution as a rider, whereas both van der Poel and Pogacar have avoided major injuries for years now.

In the USA, van Aert had the opportunity to meet several celebrities and also watch live Basketball. He was asked about the sport and compared the financial system of both: "The NBA has a completely different financial system than we do. We can learn a lot from that". Currently, cycling teams do not benefit from TV rights, and whilst the sport is bringing in more money than ever, it's also bringing bigger differences which become a big problem for smaller teams.

Lastly he was also asked about the balance between being a leader and a domestique within Team Visma | Lease a Bike, to which he answered: "Winning as a team is a special feeling, but nothing beats a personal victory. I also need to go for my own chances every now and then."