Van Aert asseses Vingegaard’s crash and Visma's Tour performance: 'That had an impact on the race’

The Tour de France has come to an end, which means that Wout van Aert will return to racing this week in Denmark. The Visma rider had to miss the Tour for well-known reasons, but in an interview with Het Nieuwsblad, the Belgian spoke at length about how he followed the Tour de France, Jonas Vingegaard’s withdrawal, and the nighttime doping tests.

It was in the run-up to the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes—the new name for the Dauphiné—that Van Aert took a hard fall. In the crash, he sustained a serious elbow injury. With his elbow bandaged, he still managed to win Stage 5 in France, but he did not start the next day. The following week, it became clear: Van Aert would have to watch the Tour de France on TV.

Of course, that was tough, but it wasn’t as bad as Van Aert had expected. “I found the team time trial on the first day the hardest. I wanted to be there anyway, and then we actually won. After that, I accepted the reality of the situation and didn’t dwell on it too much anymore. After seven years of the Tour de France, it’s also nice to be able to have a completely different July for a change.”

The Belgian did that during a training camp in Livigno. The training sessions weren’t even planned specifically around the Tour. “But the Tour is, of course, the Tour. It’s not that hard to follow it. Just open your phone in the evening and you’re right in the thick of it, whether you want to be or not. I did make a point of watching Vive Le Vélo a few times,” Van Aert admitted.

Of course, Vingegaard’s withdrawal didn’t go unnoticed by the Belgian. “I was just in the car with the team doctor after a training session when it happened. His wife called and asked, ‘Did you see that?’ We immediately turned on a live stream. The rest of the car ride was very quiet,” he recalled.

"I was watching from a distance, so I'm not 100 percent sure what was going on within the team, but despite Pogacar's dominance, I felt that we still had the morale and confidence to go all out. Which is exactly what we were doing in that stage,” Van Aert reflected on that fateful fifteenth stage.

Naturally, the Belgian was disappointed for his Danish teammate. “But also for the Tour. Pogacar’s main challenger is out of the race. In recent years, our team has been pretty much the only one racing to win rather than settling for places of honour,” he said, explaining Visma | Lease a Bike’s approach.

And then, of course, there was that nighttime doping test, the night before Vingegaard dropped out. “That surprised me. I’ve never experienced that myself,” Van Aert admitted. Did he understand why it happened? “I do, if anti-doping agencies have evidence that that timing is necessary to detect certain substances. I’m definitely in favor of proper testing.”

"But Jonas was the only one checked at 2 a.m. Not a single other competitor was woken up at the same time. That affects the race one way or another, and I absolutely cannot accept that. There simply has to be a clear standard. Now someone has been singled out who—no matter how you look at it—had a disrupted night’s sleep. That had an impact on the race,” said Van Aert.