Wout van Aert absent from the fight but Visma insists stage 5 was "a good sign for what’s still to come" at the 2025 Giro d'Italia

Ordinarily, Wout van Aert would have more than fancied his chances of taking the win on the kind of parcours that highlighted stage 5 at the 2025 Giro d'Italia. Given his struggles with form and consistency of late however, the Team Visma | Lease a Bike star failed to get himself into the mix as Mads Pedersen took victory ahead of Edoardo Zambanini and Tom Pidcock.

Eventually coming home in 90th position, just over three minutes down on the stage winning Maglia Rosa, Van Aert lived up to his pre-stage prediction and proved unable to keep himself at the front long enough to compete for the victory. Nevertheless, Team Visma | Lease a Bike has seen reason to be optimistic by the performance of Van Aert on stage 5.

“Wout said during the stage that he already felt a bit better today,” confirmed the team's sports director Marc Reef in a post-stage interview afterwards with VTM Nieuws. “He wanted to try to survive the Montescaglioso, and he managed that without pushing himself too hard. After that, he started to feel it more in his legs, but he still helped position Simon Yates.”

And so, whilst a victory remains out of reach for Van Aert in 2025, Reef is confident that the 30-year-old's level is getting back to where it needs to be. Positive news for the rest of the Giro d'Italia. “We can be cautiously satisfied, and so was Wout. It’s a good sign for what’s still to come in this Giro. But again, we have to remain careful,” concludes the DS' assessment of his team's star. “And that’s very tough for a winner like Wout. But this is the situation we’re in. We came here aiming for more, but now it’s mostly about damage control. At least now we can slowly start to look ahead.”