Cycling
Wout van Aert: a tour de force among cycling professionals
Belgian pro cyclist Wout van Aert loves to push himself to – and beyond – the limit and he's hoping to do it again at the upcoming edition of the Tour de France.
Recent bronze medal winner Wout van Aert is somehow not tired. The Belgian professional cyclist recently climbed off his bike after a five-hour ride in Spain's Sierra Nevada mountains, spinning and churning up 3,500m of climbing in summer-like heat. But let’s not get dramatic; for the Belgian pro, this is an unremarkable training effort, a seemingly inconsequential building block. Yet these sorts of rides, piled together with intention, enable him to be a central figure at the most consequential races.
It's the middle of May, a roughly a month after van Aert completed a campaign in the storied Spring Classics, a series of one-day European road races among the most prestigious on the international cycling calendar. But rather than head to the beach to recharge with a novel and a cocktail, the racer just got back to work. There's always a looming goal – in this case, he 's joined up with some of his team-mates on the Dutch-registered Jumbo-Visma trade team to begin his buildup for the Tour de France, which departs from the Basque city of Bilbao on July 1.
You can't really pigeon-hole Wout van Aert when it comes to his abilities
© Kristof Ramon/Red Bull Content Pool
"To be honest, I also like to go to the beach, but it's the middle of the season," van Aert, 28, notes when asked about his current training objectives. "Here is the serious restart of preparation toward summer and there are different accents necessary for a race like the Tour de France versus what I need for one-day races. But at this camp we're creating a stable base for the whole summer."
The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible
Smashing the norms of pro cycling
Professional bike racing is rooted in time-tested traditions and one trend that has defined the sport’s modern era is specialisation. For decades, as the stakes have risen and training methods have advanced, the biggest races in every discipline have been dominated by riders who lean into their specific strengths – whether it's climbing, sprinting, time trialing or racing off-road.
Van Aert is one of a handful of riders who have taken this paradigm and smashed it to pieces. He entered the public eye as a cyclocross phenom, a rider with the gifts and work ethic to win world championships in that discipline, which demands technical skills and intense power. And he did just that.
Cyclocross was van Aert's first love
© Kristof Ramon/Red Bull Content Pool
In the past five years however van Aert has kept pushing the envelope, finding success in a mind-boggling range of racing endeavors. He's become a key protagonist at the hardest Spring Classics one-dayers and he has made a surprising impact at the Tour de France, the most celebrated bike race on the planet, winning stages in every conceivable scenario. In other words, beating the specialists at their specialties.
Van Aert says that his astounding versatility cannot be fully explained by his talents and work ethic. "The biggest thing is that I never limited myself – I've never thought that's impossible," he says, reflecting on his unexpected breakthroughs at the Tour de France. "I was just always open-minded, always wanting to give it a go. A lot of people don’t try it because they think they can't."
Towards excellence
This bike-racing legend, like so many others, begins in the Belgian region of Flanders. Van Aert was born and raised in Herentals, a small city near Antwerp. In Flanders, bike racing is hugely popular, arguably even bigger than football. His father was an amateur racer and the boy entered his first race at the age of eight. After scoring a second-place finish in that race, the youngster was hooked.
Van Aert, who as an adolescent was already turning heads with his raw power and tactical intelligence, formally arrived on the scene as a world-class talent in 2012, when he finished second in the Junior Men's race at the UCI World Championships in West Flanders. Standing next to him on the podium was a Dutch teenager named Mathieu van der Poel, who had finished the race eight seconds earlier. Thus began a rivalry that continues to sizzle today, one already acknowledged as among the greatest in cycling history.
The two teenagers would grow up to dominate cyclocross on the global stage, continually pushing each other to the extreme. To date, van Aert has won three world championships and three World Cup season titles, but those stats fail to fully capture his generational talent. He was clearly on track to establish himself as an all-time cyclocross legend. But he was destined for bigger success.
van Aert and van der Poel battle it out at a cyclocross this past season
© Kristof Ramon/Red Bull Content Pool
“It was definitely not a plan, it just came quite naturally,” says van Aert, discussing his transition to road racing. "When I was just a cyclocross rider, I did some races on the road as a preparation and I felt I had a good level on the road, too. So I thought, 'why not try some Spring Classics?'"
When asked to synopsise the differences between cyclocross and road racing, van Aert offers a brief tutorial. “A cyclocross race is about one hour and it’s flat-out from the gun,” he begins. “A lot of times it's a battle against yourself, trying to do the course as fast as possible without any mistakes.”
Road races are a different beast. “They can go up to six or seven hours," van Aert continues. “There are more easy parts in between, where you need to draft and save yourself for the finale. But there’s always a point where the race explodes, so you definitely need a bigger engine, because it's so long. It’s more about fatigue resistance. Often it comes down to who has a tiny bit more left in the finale."
Warming down after a race is important whether on the road or in cyclocross
© Kristof Ramon/Red Bull Content Pool
Commentators and professional racers doubted that van Aert would have the stamina to factor into the final moments of any of the big Spring Classics, especially against seasoned road-racing specialists who were used to the longer distances and hadn't already raced an intense cyclocross calendar from September to February.
The pundits were wrong. In 2018, his first attempt at a road-racing campaign, van Aert finished in the top 10 at major Spring Classics like Strade Bianche, Gent-Wevelgem and the iconic Tour of Flanders. And after showing steady improvement the following year, he notched a breakout year in 2020, winning Strade Bianche and Milan San Remo, and finishing second at the Tour of Flanders and the UCI World Championships. In just three years, he blossomed from an intriguing question mark on the road into a proven superstar.
Pre-tour success – the Belgian National time trial secured again
© Kristof Ramon/Red Bull Content Pool
The Tour de France is the biggest race in the world and you can feel it on everything
Van Aert laughs and says his initial participation in the Tour de France was "basically by accident". One of his Jumbo-Visma team-mates withdrew right before the race began and the Belgian was inserted onto the roster with little warning. Nonetheless, the 2019 Tour started off well. On Stage 10, the rookie came into the final kilometre with a select pack of 30 riders and out-muscled several elite sprinters for the win.
Immediately van Aert saw how winning a Tour de France stage is unlike winning any other race. "It's the biggest race in the world and you can feel it on everything," he says. "If you have a big performance, you have media straight after the finish until you go to bed. I remember getting so many messages and phone calls, it felt like the whole world was watching."
On his Tour debut in 2019, van Aert was part of the team time trial victory
© Kristof Ramon
But the party ended a few days later with a catastrophic crash in a time trial on Stage 13. Van Aert clipped a poorly placed barrier on a tight turn and suffered a deep cut in his thigh. The bloody injury ended his season – he couldn’t walk until autumn – and threatened the arc of his career. Fortunately, he was able to make a full recovery.
9 Tour wins already
Now, several years later, van Aert has nine individual stage wins at the Tour de France, a remarkable tally given the variety of the terrain he's triumphed on and the way he has ridden in service of team-mates vying for the overall title. Jumbo-Visma is the most dominant team in the sport – on par with Oracle Red Bull Racing in Formula 1 – so the pursuit of personal glory must be balanced with team responsibilities. Every year that van Aert has ridden the Tour, a team-mate has finished the race on the podium.
Green and yellow jerseys for van Aert's Jumbo-Visma team in the 2022 Tour
© Kristof Ramon
When asked to pick his most thrilling Tour victories, van Aert singles out two performances. The first came on Stage 11 at the 2021 Tour, on a route that climbed the hulking Mount Ventoux twice. For a larger rider who's known for his power more than his sustained climbing ability, the achievement was startling.
His original plan was simply to get into the day's breakaway and see what happened, but as the race unfolded, he dropped his breakaway companions one-by-one and held off the charging general-classification competitors for the win. "I mean, for me it was kind of a surprise that I could win the stage like that," he admits.
Then, last year, van Aert had another electrifying win on Stage 4. For two days he'd already worn the yellow jersey, given to the rider with the lowest overall time at the Tour. "Riding in the yellow jersey was a childhood dream of mine,” he says. “But it’s not really common that the yellow jersey can attack and then win the stage solo." But that’s just what the Belgian racer did, pedalling with such ferocity near the top of a punchy climb late in the stage that he dropped everyone and rode alone to the line. As he approached the finish, he flapped his arms like a bird, radiating pure joy.
A truly iconic celebration as van Aert celebrates his solo Stage 4 win
© Michael Steele/Getty Images
Van Aert finished the 2022 Tour de France with three stage wins to his name, the green jersey (given to the winner of the points race) and the combativity award, honoring his relentless aggression – and best of all, his Jumbo-Visma team-mate Jonas Vingegaard ended the race in the champion's yellow jersey. "Those kinds of achievements make me feel most proud," he says. "Doing something special means more to me than trying to win certain races three or four times. I'm more interested in unexpected challenges."
Wout van Aert in the green jersey in Paris
© Kramon/Red Bull Content Pool
Doing something special means more to me than trying to win certain races three or four times
The 'I, ride, focus' mantra
Life is complicated, even for a wildly talented world champion road racer. This year’s 2023 Spring Classics road season exemplified the sorts of challenges van Aert must wrestle with – and the poise with which he manages them. It's hard to possess greatness and shoulder the expectation that you will always prevail, especially if you're always competing against others who also possess ethereal talent, train obsessively and relentlessly fight for victory.
Van Aert was self-aware enough to seek the counsel of a mental coach, Rudy Heylen, when he was a teenager. He'd buckled under the weight of pressure in championship races and understood that he needed some guidance. "I felt like it was harder at that time to deal with the stress of going to a championship," van Aert says. "One of the most important things Rudy taught me is to focus on controlling the controllables. It's a waste of energy to think about the weather or your competitors.
And so I started using this mantra – Ik, fiets, focus [I, ride, focus] – as a trick to keep my focus on myself instead of thinking it's hard, there’s still five laps or I made a mistake there."
This mental training helped a lot, enabling van Aert to win more big races, contextualise the races that didn’t go his way and remain focused on the things he can control, like his tactical savvy and his dedication to training. Fittingly, when van Aert co-wrote a memoir in 2017 detailing his approach to cyclocross glory, he titled it Ik Fiets Focus. "Yeah, it's easy to say," he admits. "But it's not easy to do."
In the thick of it during the 2023 Paris-Roubaix
© Kristof Ramon/Red Bull Content Pool
Consider his 2023 Spring Classics campaign. One would not be exaggerating to say that in the history of bike racing, van Aert may have posted the best results that could be labelled a disappointment. In the five races that defined his spring, van Aert finished third, first, second, fourth and third.
He failed to win the three most important races (Milan San Remo, the Tour of Flanders and Paris Roubaix), but was in the mix in the final moments of all three, seconds or one small misfortune away from victory, beaten by his longtime rival, van der Poel or another generational talent, Tadej Pogačar. In these iconic races, van Aert, van der Poel and Pogačar were riding on a different level than everyone else.
"It's special to be in the end of the race always with the same guys," says van Aert, acknowledging the meaning of these rivalries. “To be one of them it’s already something big – and both Mathieu and Tadej are exceptional athletes."
Classics success against van der Poel and Pogcar at this season's E3 race
© Kristof Ramon/Red Bull Content Pool
Van Aert's rivalry with van der Poel inspired much public debate this past spring. As they sat on a backstage couch before the podium presentation at Milan San Remo, TV coverage captured obvious awkward tension between the two men. Van Aert later acknowledged that he would never consider his big rival a friend. And now, sitting in Spain two months later, he's pondering how competition and friendship play out on the racecourse.
"I really think it's important to respect everyone that’s competing, especially your biggest rivals,” van Aert says. “It’s important to be able to shake hands after the race, because your rivals are training 100 per cent and then giving 100 per cent to race at such a high level, but I think friendship is something else and it would be impossible to fight against a friend."
Rivals cannot be the best of friends, but the respect is always there
© Kristof Ramon/Red Bull Content Pool
Van Aert's feelings about friendship and the deeper meaning of competition played out two weeks later at Gent-Wevelgem. There, van Aert appeared to be the strongest rider, but wound up out front for the final 50 kilometres with his team-mate, Frenchman Christophe Laporte. In horrible weather, the two riders held off a pack of pursuers and in the final moments, van Aert allowed his team-mate to cross the line first. Several icons of Belgian cycling criticised the gesture, opining that true champions shouldn't offer such gifts.
But van Aert couldn't care less whether he retires with one Gent-Wevelgem title (he won in 2021) or five. "For me it feels like we won this race together and I was surprised there was so much talk about it," he says. "Me and Christophe are good friends, so it wouldn't feel nice to race for it against each other.
"I think for Christophe this victory meant a lot more than for me and it was amazing to dominate the field with a team-mate and ride in the front for 50K. I have no regrets and it will always be a special day for me." The toughest pill to swallow came at the last race of his Spring Classics campaign, Paris Roubaix. There, van Aert showed signs of being the strongest rider, but he suffered a late puncture that allowed van der Poel to solo uncontested to victory.
Gifting the win to his team-mate at Gent-Wevelgem
© Kristof Ramon
Van Aert admits that he initially absorbed his third-place finish as "a bit of a disappointment." It's hard to face so much external pressure and lose such a pivotal race due to a mechanical issue. But a week later, after remembering his priorities and his mantra about controlling the controllables and letting go of everything else, he saw things differently.
"Now I'm just proud of the level that I reached," he reflects. "It's important to realise as an athlete that things don't always go exactly the way you want them to go, but the things I had in my own control I did 100 per cent." Fittingly, afterwards, rather than go to the beach, van Aert went on a three-day bikepacking adventure with some of his mates, riding dirt roads from Flanders to Champagne, staying active without studying any power data.
As our interview winds down, van Aert pauses to describe the legacy he hopes to leave behind after his racing days are over. "Sure, there are still big races to win," he says. But he's not looking to build a monumental Wikipedia entry; he wants to race with class and heart and panache. "I really like challenges and it’s an even better feeling when you achieve something that everybody thinks is impossible. I want to be known as someone who tried to do special things."
