Months of rumors about the potential move of Wout Van Aert to Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe have met their demise. Defying those who love the drama of a transfer, the 30-year-old Belgian has signed a deal to stay with Visma-Lease a Bike to “the end of his career.”
The news, announced on Wednesday morning, carries with it implications across a variety of different topics, and thus provides us with at least some fodder for discussion even as it quashes the juicier rumors of a possible change of teams by one of cycling’s biggest stars.
The mooted transfer that apparently won’t be happening is a fine place to start. It was never entirely clear whether there was actually anything to the reports that Red Bull was truly angling to bring Van Aert, who is personally sponsored by the brand, into the WorldTour team that the brand now owns. Since the first murmurs of Red Bull’s potential acquisition of the Bora-Hansgrohe team, Van Aert has been linked to the squad, but we may never know whether those rumors came from well-connected sources or were instead the simple connecting of sponsorship dots.
Van Aert was already under contract with Visma through 2026, so any move would have involved some kind of agreement to terminate that deal; now, it seems definitive that it won’t be happening.
Does that mean that other rumored transfers to Bora are also unlikely to occur? Or does it instead mean that they are even more likely now that the team can spend its money on other talents? We certainly don’t know, but dual Olympic champion Remco Evenepoel is one of the names to watch on that front, with Tom Pidcock the other. Van Aert’s longterm deal to stay with Visma may have implications for Pidcock’s and/or Evenepoel’s future, but we don’t know yet what those implications are.
We can say with more certainty, however, that Van Aert’s deal is a sign of stability at Visma. Amid what has been a turbulent year for the team, going from winning all three Grand Tours last year to winning none of them and having a rough Classics campaign to boot, the squad has nonetheless decided to stay the course for next year and beyond.
That says as much about the vibes at the team as it does about anything more quantifiable. Compare Van Aert deciding to stay with Visma for life to whatever is going on with the Ineos Grenadiers, who seem to be in a constant state of reshuffling as they deal with the fallout of continued disappointment in their road racing goals. However frustrating Van Aert’s season has been – and remember that he is currently recovering from a knee injury that knocked him out of a Vuelta a España where he seemed destined to win a jersey or two – it’s not bad enough to send him elsewhere. He has thrived on this team and he clearly expects to continue to do so.
More than simply indicating to us observers that the vibes are still good, Van Aert’s decision should help reassure his teammates of a continuation of those good vibes. After all, Van Aert seems like a consummate team player, an image bolstered by the Unchained docuseries on Netflix (at least once the producers got his season 1 villain arc got out of the way). He is a rider who will put his own ambitions on hold to help others at times, and that sort of figure can rally his companions even amid trying times.
Van Aert’s credentials as a teammate are precisely why the length of the deal, the other major talking point here, makes sense despite his age and his relative lack of recent success.
On the face of it, coming to this agreement with a 30-year-old whose past few seasons have seen him fall short of expectations on several occasions in the biggest Classics might seem more like signing an aging Chris Froome to a longterm deal than locking up a still-young Tadej Pogačar. Van Aert, however, brings so much to the table that it makes plenty of sense to secure him for the long haul.
For starters, he really isn’t all that old yet. He should theoretically still have some huge Classics campaigns ahead of him. It wasn’t that long ago that he would have been considered right in the heart of his Classics prime. And although Van Aert’s Vuelta injury sure looked like it hurt, there has been no indication that it was a career altering fall. Before he went down at the Vuelta, he was an absolute force on a variety of terrains and should still be for years to come.
Even if he isn’t, he remains one of cycling’s most valuable domestiques, both in his skillset and in his willingness to do the work for others. After a brutal year, Jonas Vingegaard has to be pleased to know that he will have Van Aert at his side for years to come at the Tour, while the likes of Christophe Laporte can be confident that their own Classics ambitions will continue to thrive alongside that of the team leader who knows how to share with his friends.
What’s more, we don’t actually know the financial details of this deal. While Froome’s contract at Israel-Premier Tech was rumored to be a costly one, Van Aert may well have signed a deal that won’t be costing Visma too dearly as he marches towards the twilight of his career, whenever that maybe be. While it’s certainly possible that this deal forces Visma to compensate Van Aert exorbitantly into his 50s as he clings to a paycheck, it seems more likely that there are some terms in place to make this more of a deal to pay him well through the next several years and give him options to ride on or maybe even to shift to a staff role when Father Time inevitably catches up with him.
In short, there are plenty of reasons to view this as one of the many mutually beneficial long term arrangements that we are seeing more and more of lately. The fact that it will run for what appears to be an indefinite period makes it stand out, but this may be less of a deal “for eternity” than it seems. Perhaps Van Aert and Visma have already discussed his retirement timeline. Regardless, every sporting career comes to an end eventually.
Until then, Van Aert can continue racking up wins at the only WorldTour team he has ever known, and where he must feel comfortable given the deal he has just signed, while that team can continue relying on him for both victories and vibes.
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