Wout van Aert: "With Hindley in yellow we shouldn't just look at Pogačar anymore"

Wout van Aert has once again gone on the attack today, joining the day's breakaway with plenty attacks afterwards. However, despite Jumbo-Visma gaining traction in the GC fight, the Belgian knows Jai Hindley will have to be taken into consideration.

"I'm finally on stage, that's nice, isn't it? We wanted to make the race hard and had hoped to stay ahead for Jonas if necessary. But Tiesj and I couldn't do that," Van Aert told Sporza at the end of the day. Alongside Benoot and Christophe Laporte the trio joined the 36-rider breakaway, and even then he attacked on two different occasions, trying to take advantage of the flat sections to gain time on the rest of the group.

The objective of the move was to be there to possibly have Jonas Vingegaard bridge across afterwards, or possibly demotivate an attack from Tadej Pogacar. However Jumbo was the team going on the attack. “But I do think we were able to put competition under pressure and made the course tough. I felt good, but it was difficult with that large breakaway group."

"We also didn't want to give Jai Hindley and Giulio Ciccone much time and they also caused a blockage in the group. That's why I tried to get away from it, but after my second attack I felt that my legs were empty, so I couldn't contribute much more," he explains. Van Aert still pulled in the GC group briefly after being caught, however Jumbo's depth in the head of the race didn't end up bringing much benefit.

However the Dutch team did not need it, Sepp Kuss set up the attack of Jonas Vingegaard which won over a minute on Tadej Pogacar. The Dane did not jump into the race lead however as Jai Hindley benefited from the breakaway to take the stage win and yellow.

“We might not have foreseen it yet, but the circumstances were right. UAE Emirates had to ride hard all day, which is in favor of Jonas. His lead is a good thing, but with Hindley in yellow we shouldn't just look at Pogačar anymore," he concluded.