Wout van Aert posts monster seven-hour ride to Strava in positive sign for Tour de France

Consistently one of the stars of the race in recent Tour de France editions, whether or not Wout van Aert will be present at the startline of the 2024 edition in Florence, isn't yet known. The Belgian is clearly returning to top form though if his Strava is anything to go by!

Currently at altitude in Tignes alongside the likes of fellow recovering crash-victims Jonas Vingegaard and Christophe Laporte, van Aert has posted the surest sign yet that he is ready for a Grand Tour return. Putting in a monster ride of over seven hours, van Aert rode for a grand total of 188.5km, taking in a massive elevation gain of 4,860 metres in the process.

Whilst this ride is unquestionably impressive in its own right and a very good sign of the current level of the Belgian superstar, later that same day, van Aert remounted his bike to go on another training ride alongside his Team Visma | Lease a Bike teammate, Tiesj Benoot. Whilst this ride, posted to Benoot's Strava was a little shorter, another forty kilometres, 1,100 metres of elevation gain and a ride time of two hours, the signs are definitely positive.

"Wout came out of Norway with a good feeling. He was able to race well there for four days, has improved and is now training well," Team Visma | Lease a Bike sports director Arthur Van Dongen recently assessed of van Aert's condition in conversation with In de Leiderstrui. "The signals I get are that things are going well. But also that they are still far from where they need to be. That could still come, we still have a few weeks. These are good signals in themselves, but the preparation is in any case different from the usual preparation. In any case, there remain question marks about the Tour de France in every possible way, that's just the way it is."