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Teams & Riders Official Wout Van Aert thread

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Yes, I've said the same thing. In 2021, TA ruined his spring classics and in the fall Tour of Britain ruined his World Championship and Paris Roubaix
Really strange how WvA didn't manage to use ToB solely as a preparation race last fall. First World Chamonship in Belgium, then PR only a week later. That he didn't manage to come absolutely fully prepared here, is just weak. Especially the worlds on home soil isn't something that happens very often.......
 
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I strongly disagree with the arrogance argument. If you´re Wout then you don´t care about other places like second, third and so on. At that very moment, I suppose he was just dissapointed that he couldn´t capitalize another chance as a huge favourite. That saying, it means he was probably emotional and kinda pissed so no wonder that he resigned to fight for other positions.
Are we talking about Cancellara here, or a guy who won one Monument and finished on the podium twice?
Cause the only way it would been reasonable is if he has a load of wins and podiums.
 
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Are we talking about Cancellara here, or a guy who won one Monument and finished on the podium twice?
Cause the only way it would been reasonable is if he has a load of wins and podiums.
WvA knows that he will have a plenty of monuments wins in the pocket in a couple of years so what´s the point trying to sprint for the third place.
 
I strongly disagree with the arrogance argument. If you´re Wout then you don´t care about other places like second, third and so on. At that very moment, I suppose he was just dissapointed that he couldn´t capitalize another chance as a huge favourite. That saying, it means he was probably emotional and kinda pissed so no wonder that he resigned to fight for other positions.

Why wouldn't he fight for a higher placement, eve as in the final sprint there was still a podium placed to be discussed in that group? For a classics guy, Wout has not materialised his skills into monuments and worlds results - the key races for any classics rider, even though he still has time to amass the huge cv he owns himself. For any cycling fan, and surely for this team as well, it's disappointing to see him sitting on a sprint to a podium place in the first monument of the year - and being emotional and pissed off it's not an excuse at this level.
 
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As good as WvA his positioning is in bunch sprints and just before (and on) the crucial climbs, I hate to say I am often thinking he should just go 3-4 positions more to the back when he is in 2nd or 3rd position, wearing that hi-viz Belgian championship jersey. In MSR he countered allmost all Pogacar attacks, and in and after the descent, he was taking more than 50% of the initiative to chase Mohoric.
It seems he feels obliged (and others expect him) to do the burden of the work in those situations, and he dutifully does it but he'll not win in this way.
Well he did win in 2020...Mohoric came in 10th. Wout will be ok. He has tremendous power and resiliency...he will win many more races.
 
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Guys there's more to cycling than monuments. Wout can contest 3 monuments (well, he could contest more honestly, but hes only targeting 3 realistically), and hes relatively new. There's some luck involved in winning these races, and also lets not forget the whole corona thing which has made the classics a bit weird the last couple of seasons.
 
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Easy. More monument or championship victories. Van Aert is a fantastic and unique rider in many ways. His versaility is tremendous. He can sprint, time trial, ride cobbles, attack in short hills and ride long mountains like no one else in modern cycling history. And his performances in many races are convincing. Both GC in one-week races, single stages in stage races, time trialing and the tier 2 one-day races like GW, Amstel and Omloop. But he hasn't won or even sprinted for victory in a monument (or worlds/olympics) since he was beaten by VdP in the Ronde in 2020.

That makes 6 of the biggest one day races without a win or sprinting for the win. Given his amazing level in so many other races, that is certainly a bit disappointing. Last year one could argue that he spent too much energy on competing in about every race he started, and that his hampered his performance in the very biggest races, but I can't see that this is the case this season. So unless something happens in the coming weeks, I certainly expect him winning or being real close to a victory in RVV and/or PR.

Obviously he's supposed to win. But I don't think he could have done anything different in MSR, besides gambling that Tadej wouldn't stay away anyway.

And yeah I don't care about podiums in one-day races. It's quite binary there, winning or losing. Imho.
 
Obviously he's supposed to win. But I don't think he could have done anything different in MSR, besides gambling that Tadej wouldn't stay away anyway.

And yeah I don't care about podiums in one-day races. It's quite binary there, winning or losing. Imho.
Nah, I think he could have attacked just before the top of Poggio and avoided Mohoric being able to attack almost immediately on the descent. If Mohoric had to use most of the descent to catch the riders in front, he wouldn't been able to open such a gap before the final flat section. It doesn't mean that WvA would have won, but his chances would have been better.

But, WvA could very well be in top shape for the later classics this sprint. It remains to be seen.
 
WVA fans need to be honest. When it comes to TT's or being a good teammate for scrawny GC contenders, he is clearly better than MVDP who isn't interested. But when MVDP lines up in races where they have the same goal and are on close to similar form, WVA immediately becomes the B dog. MVDP has a massive head to head advantage against him in CX and is ahead on the road too in the races that count. Even in the last year - MVDP drops him in the two biggest races of the year, RVV and PR - and on and on.
 
in small sprints it's more about who has more energy left or who has the bigger acceleration.

Obviously WVA in MSR blew his best legs already. In RVV 2020 it was close but WVA left it too late so couldn't overhaul VDP acceleration in time. In bunch sprints WVA is simply much better (holding top speed + positioning). But in small group sprints I'd say VDP has the slight advantage. Although even VDP is susceptible to overestimating himself (what happened with Asgreen, spent too much power and was left for dead)
Well, we can go on and on, but the bottom line is that when the two line up at a bike race, MVDP wins most of the time - and there is a huge sample size here between these two guys. This includes when they are both sprinting - take stage whatever at TA last year - MVDP with better tactics and clearly faster for the easy win. Pretty sure he would have overpowered Wout even without using the superior tactics...
 

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