It’s hard to call a season with three Grand Tour stage wins a miss. But that’s a little how Wout van Aert’s 2024 feels, even though vanishingly little of that could be laid at his feet or called his fault.
Still, after another year where one of cycling’s most talented racers has come up short of his goals, frustration may now be edging toward something else: desperation, on the road to a kind of despair. Wout van Aert has had a sterling career even if it ended tomorrow. But with every chance to give it a major capstone – a cobble monument or rainbow jersey – that passes by, there is an increasing urgency, which will likely do him no favors as he tries to accomplish those elusive goals.
Van Aert’s 2024 has been derailed more than a badly worn chain.
A promising start to the spring ended with that devastating mass crash at Dwars door Vlaanderen, which cost him any hope of even racing the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix and ultimately spelled the end of his planned Giro d’Italia campaign.
Only a late addition to Visma-Lease a Bike’s Tour de France team, he spent some of that race in service of Jonas Vingegaard and the rest of the time coming just short: leading the pack home on stage one behind the DSM duo of Romain Bardet and Frank van den Broek, and then narrowly losing two sprints, including one where he was impeded by Arnaud Démare.
But the form looked promising heading into the Olympics, only to see Van Aert upstaged by Belgian teammate Remco Evenepoel in the time trial and then the road race – the latter of which ended with a muted 37th-place finish after a late crash in a chase group. Cue the Vuelta and three stage wins with rising form heading to a hilly World Championships road course ideal for his abilities, and then yet another crash and the end of his season.
If this was one season, it would be frustrating, disappointing – dispiriting, even – but manageable. But it’s more than that. Whether crashes, up-and-down form, or simple bad luck, Van Aert has often struggled to put together complete seasons and hit his biggest objectives.
Van Aert’s first WorldTour season, 2019, was marked by an early spring transfer to then-Jumbo after a contract dispute, and he spent part of the year just getting stuck in. A breakout Tour de France ended with that horrific time trial crash.
In the years since, he’s alternated between showing the clear generational talent he possesses with a curious penchant for missing some of his biggest objectives. In 2021, for example, he won Gent-Wevelgem and Amstel Gold Race and then accomplished a neat hat trick at the Tour, winning a sprint stage, time trial stage, and mountain stage (from the breakaway). But he was sixth at Flanders and a rueful silver medallist at the Tokyo Olympics in the road race. Since his 2020 Milan-San Remo victory, he’s never finished lower than seventh at a major Classic. But he’s never finished higher than second.
Part of the story of Wout van Aert is the story of a generational talent in a generation of generational talents. Three of the riders he most often loses to are the riders everyone else loses to as well. Remco Evenepoel appears to be maturing into the rider he’s long been hyped to be. Tadej Pogačar may be the best men’s road racer since Eddy Merckx, a true fuoriclasse who can, and reliably does, win on any course on any day.
But it’s Mathieu van der Poel against whom Van Aert will always, fairly or not, be judged. Since their days racing junior cyclocross, the two have matched up on dozens, probably hundreds, of start lines. And while the early split of wins on the road and in cyclocross were fairly even, in recent seasons they have started to separate. While Van Aert has had much more Tour de France success, with nine stages to Van der Poel’s one, I strongly suspect he would trade his top-line palmares for Van der Poel’s (World Championship, three Flanders and two Roubaixs) straight across if given the chance.
There is a cruel irony that it is at the hands of Raymond Poulidor’s grandson that a kind of next-generation Poulidor may be forged before our eyes. But the facts don’t lie: since going to the WorldTour, Van Aert has a remarkable 38 second-place finishes, including four World Championships (road and TT); a Flanders and Roubaix, and that Olympic road race. Three of those seven major almosts came at Van der Poel’s hand.
The question, then, is what breaks it? Can it, even? Van Aert is on one of the best teams in the world, with two years yet to run on his contract and likely able to write his ticket with Visma-Lease a Bike or anywhere else he might choose to go. And his remarkable penchant for second places might be more a sign of a rider who is regularly in the mix and fights hard to the finish no matter what, which seems like a positive trait that will eventually – right? – come good. But in a little over a week, he will also be standing on the other side of 30 years old.
Much of what has befallen him – several bad crashes, that cursed flat tire on the Carrefour de l’Arbre in 2023 – are not his fault. But those things happen and when they do they cost riders races and sometimes seasons.
If and when the day comes when Van Aert finally hoists that massive cobblestone trophy, or crests the Paterberg alone in the lead, or pulls on the rainbow jersey in a discipline other than cyclocross, it will be a cathartic moment not only for him, but all cycling fans.
But it will not be this year. And there are only so many years left.
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