Wout van Aert reveals extent of knee injury in Instagram post

Wout van Aert has made his debut in the cyclocross season this past week in Loenhout and it marked the return after three months sidelined from competition. A year marked by bad luck, the Team Visma | Lease a Bike rider ended his season prematurely with a brutal crash at the Vuelta a España. He has now shown how the knee currently looks.

In an Instagram post, the Belgian rider has shown several clips and pictures taken in the final week of the year, one of them being of his current gym work on the right leg. In September, van Aert crashed on the final week of the Vuelta a España in a wet descent and was forced to abandon the race with a deep wound.

He did not suffer fractures as a result, but the wound could've been infected so he stayed several days in the hospital as a precaution before flying home. He had issues running for a while which forced him to start the CX season late, and his first race was also delayed as he got ill right before the Zilvermeercross Mol.

Next spring he will once again aim for the cobbled classics, trying to bring home his first monument in either the Tour of Flanders or Paris-Roubaix, something he's come very close in the past but was often met with a stronger rival - usually the figure of Mathieu van der Poel.