Wout Van Aert’s Stage Hunting Might Be RUINING His CAREER

Wout Van Aert’s Stage Hunting Might Be RUINING His CAREER

For years of his career, Wout van Aert has been known as one of the deadliest stage hunters out there, and many still believe it has been the sole thing keeping him from reaching the next level. But the upcoming season could have been a bit different, as he had a big choice to make. He was able to decide between the long shot at the pink jersey, or better results at the classics and some Giro stage wins. What he decided in the end though, might have just stagnated his career and prevented him from going the extra mile.

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For years of his career, Wout van Aert has been known as one of the deadliest stage hunters out there, and many still believe it has been the sole thing keeping him from reaching the next level. But the upcoming season could have been a bit different, as he had a big choice to make.

He was able to decide between the long shot at the pink jersey, or better results at the classics and some Giro stage wins. What he decided in the end though, might have just stagnated his career and prevented him from going the extra mile.

See, for weeks people were speculating that van Aert is looking forward to the general classification in his first ever Giro d’Italia appearance. However, he has just put those rumors to sleep, claiming that even if he were to enter the

Giro, his personal preference would have been stage wins, rather than the pink jersey on the final stage. He claimed: “I don’t always see limits, but I also dare to look at things realistically. Riding for the classification cannot be combined with the other things I want.

Maybe I can get a nice result if I sacrifice a lot for it, but I don’t want that.” First thing we can make out of this comment is that van Aert doesn’t really believe he’s capable of winning the pink jersey at the Giro, and even if he does, he’s well

Aware that it would probably be the only notable achievement of the next season, since he’d have to sacrifice so much. And then again, there are his interests. If he doesn’t want to go for the GC and likes to stage hunt instead, we have to respect his decision, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

With that comment though, he was only speaking theoretically, at least for now. Nothing has been confirmed yet, and the harsh reality is that oftentimes, regardless of what the riders want, it’s their teams that make the final verdict.

Going for the pink jersey at the Giro would definitely be a challenge for him, and we all know that can be appealing. After riding the past five Tours de France as a domestique, riding the Giro for the first time does sound like a breath of fresh air.

But we cannot forget about Wout’s Tour performances, which have been deeply impressive. He was able to claim a total of nine stage wins, but that’s only what it says on paper. He’s served as one of the most important domestiques of the Jumbo-Visma squad and has

Helped his teammate Jonas Vingegaard win the past two editions of the race. Without van Aert carrying the team through the hardest climbs, Vingegaard’s job would have been much harder. And mind you, he was 19th, 20th and 21st overall between 2020 and 2022, which is anything but bad for someone of his caliber.

However, riders are still remembered way more because of their wins, rather than their domestique adventures, and the last three times van Aert took the general classification was in 2018 at the Tour of Denmark, and in 2021 and 2023 at the Tour of Britain.

He was also second overall at the Tirreno-Adriatico in 2021, only behind Tadej Pogačar. The harsh reality though, is that when looking back in history, the three Grand Tours are usually the only races that matter to those who might not have deep knowledge about cycling and only follow the sport on occasion.

And in the eyes of those, Wout van Aert hasn’t achieved much. Naturally, some have started wondering how he would do if he were to specifically target the GC at any of the Grand Tours. And honestly, he likely wonders that too, but doesn’t want to take the risk, since

He doesn’t believe it’s worth it. In his eyes, the Classics and the Olympic Games are a huge target, with the Grand Tours being seen as a side quest. To get an insight into his thinking, here’s a comment that he recently made: “I would

Hate to say I was 5th in the Giro, but I was bored for the rest of the year, because I have been altitude training 100 times and I had to lose an extra two kilograms.” For him, the tradeoff is not worth it, and with his one day goals, it actually isn’t.

It wouldn’t make sense to force him into something he doesn’t want to do, but it would be the one thing that would take him to the next level. He also said: “The explosiveness that you need in the Classics is something completely

Different from not having a bad moment for three weeks in a row. Now I do many different things, which give me a lot of satisfaction. I think it’s great that I can and am allowed to combine all that”. And if that’s what he thinks, that’s totally fine.

After all, we could argue that he’s just a realist that walks the walk and doesn’t want to target something he feels is unachievable. Very few riders can actually win a bunch of sprints and also target the GC in Grand Tours at the same time.

Being good at sprints requires a lot of fast-twitch powerful musculature, when going for the GC at a Grand Tour requires the complete opposite, which plenty of slow-twitch, endurance-based muscle fibers. Contending for the GC also requires another thing Wout doesn’t have. A very high power-to-weight ratio.

The tall and solid van Aert does have that for the short sprints he loves to dominate in, but not for the longer climbs, where he would likely struggle when looking at it long-term. And you’d think he’s capable of that because of what we’ve seen at different editions

Of the Tour de France, but he isn’t. Riding tempo with Jonas Vingegaard is one thing, while matching the favorites over the course of three weeks is a completely different world. Wout is well aware of that though. He said: “If I had classification ambitions, it is not to win, because my morphology is

Against me. And if it is not to win, I think it is a shameful sacrifice.” In simple terms, going for the win is all that matters to him, and if he knows he can’t do it, he rather wouldn’t have that goal.

Regardless though, van Aert has previously won mountain stages at the Tour de France, and he even managed to drop Tadej Pogačar on a summit finish. So, the potential is definitely there, but him going for the GC would likely mean a drastic change in his profile as a rider.

He would need to drop weight in order to become a consistent lean climbing machine, which would not go well with the Spring Classics or the winter cyclo-cross competitions. Mind you, he’s yet to win the Tour of Flanders or Paris-Roubaix, which are both happening

Only around a month before the Giro, when all the other GC riders are already in deep focus and a heavy schedule of altitude training camps. Wout said: “I’m not really into limits, but riding for a classification cannot really be combined with the other competitions that I participate in.

I wouldn’t like to sacrifice other things to get a good result in a classification.” But there’s one more thing that’s different now. Wout’s winter approach has been tweaked a little since his change of coach. His previous coach, the trusted old ally Marc Lamberts, has followed Primož Roglič to

Bora-Hansgrohe, and was replaced by Mathieu Heijboer. Allegedly, he puts on different accents. They have consciously chosen to approach the cyclocross season a little more slowly and build up more progressively towards the road season, to try and get the best of both worlds.