How short our memories are.
It had to be here, on the white roads of Tuscany, on a day that pulled the Giro d’Italia to pieces, where Wout van Aert reminded us.
Van Aert won Stage 9 of the Giro with a kind of inevitability tinged with nostalgia, pushing aside a year mostly to forget.
“It’s easy to say this victory means a lot to me. I almost cannot explain it,” Van Aert said, his voice thin and tired. “Yeah, it had to be here, I believe, because this place is where my road career started back in 2018. I had to win the stage after a long period without, delivering, finally again. Yeah, it feels so good.”
The win came on the kind of terrain Van Aert rides with muscle memory. White gravel. Sharp hills. Punchy finishes. The Strade Bianche DNA ran thick through Sunday’s stage, and Van Aert read every twist and corner like a local. Because he is, in a way.
Experience was everything, in the end. “I know the final pretty well,” he said. “I needed to do the move in the last three corners. The last corner ... it’s pretty close to the line. Once you dive in first position, you’re almost there.”
It wasn’t a dominant stage win. UAE’s Isaac del Toro, now in the maglia rosa, pulled for the entirety of the last 15 kilometers, Van Aert glued to his wheel so closely that Del Toro would have heard the rubber zing of touching tires behind him more than once.
Del Toro was incredible. He pulled into Siena, dancing up the final climb (can we appreciate the souplesse, for a moment? Gorgeous.) putting the entirety of himself into the pedals. But Van Aert would not break. And once they reached the top, where it levels off and twists back and forth, then Van Aert’s knowledge of the classic Strade Bianche finish put the odds in his favor.
He punched past Del Toro, stretched the elastic just far enough, and came around the last corner, kissing the barrier with his rear tire, using every inch, and crossed the line for his 50th professional victory.
“He did such an amazing ride,” Van Aert said of the young Mexican. “I felt a bit bad … I had to not do too much with him because, obviously, he’s also a competitor of my teammate Simon Yates, and I had to leave the work to him. But still, he was so close to beating me. I had to fight all the way to the top.”
This is a version of Van Aert we haven’t seen much in the last year. Bruised by a difficult spring—both physically and emotionally—he hadn’t won yet in 2025. Illness and crashes made him a nearly man through his beloved classics. Then came the Giro, his debut, and a stage-hunting campaign that didn’t start with much hunting.
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