"We are being unfair to him" - Alberto Contador comes out in defense of Wout van Aert amidst another criticism swarm

Alberto Contador spoke yesterday on Eurosport's La Montonera about the situation that Wout van Aert is going through. The cyclist from Madrid, regular commentator of the channel, wanted to relativize the bad moment that the Belgian cyclist is going through at the start of the Giro d'Italia.

Recall that Van Aert came to the Giro looking for the maglia rosa, but couldn't beat Mads Pedersen in the first stage sprint. Then, after a bad time trial, he got carried away on the tough third stage that had a perfect profile for him. It seems that the crashes of recent months have brought a new reality for a cyclist from Visma who, on the other hand, seems to have arrived ill at the Corsa Rosa, which has caused his poor performance in these first few days.

"It's cycling, we have the example with Mikel [Landa], he has arrived prepared and grounded, I think it all started at Dwars door Vlaanderen last year with that bad crash. Then there has been chaining one thing with another. I think last year we had the same Van Aert that we had seen elsewhere in the Vuelta a España, he was being a spectacle every day. We are being unfair to him," Contador said of Van Aert.

Juan Clavijo, narrator at Eurosport, went further: "He is being treated almost like an ex-ciclist, it is said that he is no longer Van Aert, that he can no longer be considered as one of the captains of the peloton. But we must remember that we saw him in the Vuelta a España to be the Van Aert we all knew. Then it's true that he had this infection that prevented him from arriving well at the Giro and we're letting the crash of the Vuelta itself pass."