Wout van Aert lashes against unfounded speculation over his health: "It would be very stupid to just say that I was sick"

Wout van Aert had very good form during the spring classics but fell ill after Amstel Gold Race which limited his training into the Giro d'Italia. He struggled on the climbs of the first day but survived them to then fight for the pink jersey in a sprint. He has commented back on the speculation that his words had been a bluff.

“It would be very stupid to just say that I was sick, because then I would encourage the rest to make the race hard, while I don’t need to," he has said to Het Nieuwsblad. "Anyone who knows me knows that I am not afraid to take the pressure. If you say in advance that you have been sick, you are apparently bluffing, if you only say it afterwards you are looking for excuses.”

Van Aert sprinted to second on the day and came very close to what would've likely been the most important stage of the race for him. However it is possible for him to contest for both the stage win and the pink jersey during today's time-trial in Tirana.

Team DS Marc Reef also explained why Team Visma | Lease a Bike was so adamant in working throughout the day: "We really didn’t know. To be honest, we rather assumed a scenario in which Wout was not good enough. Why did we ride anyway? Because we have the same interests as Lidl-Trek in this Giro and we didn’t want to start playing the game from day one. Suppose we don’t ride and we still win: that’s not the team we want to be.”

“On the first long climb of the day, Wout was really pushed back. Wout had doubts himself, but in the end it turned around," he shares. But in the last hour of racing the Belgian reassured that that work had gone to good use: “At that moment, he also started communicating more with his teammates. Then we thought: yes, this is going well.”