Wout van Aert's coach Heijboer: "It might have more to do with the fact that Wout missed nearly an entire season last year"

Wout van Aert has shown his best level once again, after two years of bad luck which have prevented him from taking the desired result at Paris-Roubaix, but this was only enough for a fourth place in both the cobbled monuments. Whilst there are reasons to be satisfied with his form, there are mixed feelings in the Team Visma | Lease a Bike camp.

“What I understand is that he just didn’t have the legs. There wasn’t anything else going on,” Visma coach Mathieu Heijboer said in an interview with In de Leiderstrui. “Whether that’s a disadvantage of the altitude training camp, I don’t know, that’s something we still need to analyze. I think it might have more to do with the fact that Wout missed nearly an entire season last year. But anyway, we still need to review everything.”

At the E3 Saxo Classic the Belgian completely missed out on the action due to bad positioning, and at Dwars door Vlaanderen his confidence took a big hit as he asked his teammates to work for a sprint in a very favourable positioned, and then cramped up - losing to Neilson Powless in the process.

At the Tour of Flanders he wasn't expected to be the leader, but his form improved further and he ended up being the strongest of the Visma riders. He managed to keep up with Mads Pedersen and Mathieu van der Poel over the cobbles, but in the final sprint just missed out on the podium. This Sunday he fell before the cobbles, but in a moment of decision at the Trouée d'Arenberg he didn't have the legs to keep up.

“We didn’t come here for fourth place, so this wasn’t the result we were hoping for. But we fought for what we were worth, and this was his place, so it’s also our place. There’s disappointment in the sense that we aim for the top and want to win, but we didn’t achieve that here," he admits.

Van Aert seemed to show in both races tremendous endurance, not being able to keep up with the early attacks but later on having the legs to keep up or even attack some of the main favourites, but in both cases he also didn't have the explosivity in the sprint to take a podium result.

However his good form won't go to waste, and over the coming days he is scheduled to race the Brabantse Pijl and Amstel Gold Race where he will be one of the favourites in both. “Well, the upcoming weeks... Brabantse Pijl and Amstel Gold Race? It was really about these two weeks. We just see that compared to the other three, he’s lacking a bit and only seems to come through later. But that’s not enough to fight for the win here.”