"Van Aert rode a strangely mediocre race" - Dutch pundit on Visma's Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and what it may mean for future classics

With Tadej Pogacar and Mathieu van der Poel absent, most of the attention at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad was on Wout van Aert and Team Visma | Lease a Bike. It was a race with many changes, and Thijs Zonneveld has shared his opinion on the Belgian after his debut in the cobbled classics.

"Van Aert rode a strangely mediocre race. I was paying attention to him early in the race and it was as if he was a bit scared in the peloton. He left a lot of space in front of him," Zonneveld said in the Het Wiel Podcast. "There were a few situations where he could have moved up, but he didn't. He himself said that he did not have the best legs to be at the front for the Molenberg." That ended up costing him a lot of energy to return to the peloton, but in terms of legs he later showed he does have the form.

"He was one of the first to reach the top of the Muur van Geraardsbergen with [Mathias] Vacek. I think it's a bit of a fear thing. Although he didn't have anything left in the sprint either. He rode a very strange race. But I think it's also in his head, because he had two huge crashes last year. Before that really leaves your head... That has to wear off," the Dutchman claims.

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Van Aert seems to have recovered physically from the crashes, and obviously still has to work on his form before the cobbled monuments in just over a month's time, but positioning seemed to be a bit of a difficulty at the Belgian classic. "Certainly when you get a bit older and you see it happen too often, it can cause a reaction. That you brake a bit earlier or are a bit more tense. That definitely plays a role one hundred percent".

""He's not at his best yet. He really still has a training deficit. Physically, it's logical that he's not at his very best yet." After Kuurne - Bruxelles - Kuurne this Sunday, where he is the defending champion and will want to go on the attack, he will take on an altitude camp before the final block of classics. However Omloop ended with an unusually big peloton, where no-one could make the difference in the end.

This meant few riders left a good impression at the end of the day, and that potentially those who skipped the race will be happy with the decision: "Jorgenson was good, but I didn't think Visma as a whole was convincing. And where was Pidcock? Morgado? Narváez? It was a strange, tame race in which the biggest names didn't deliver. The riders who weren't there, such as Pogacar, Van der Poel, Pedersen, won't have been impressed. They think: I'm not scared of this."

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