Van Hooydonck gives heart-warming insider's view of Van Aert's Roubaix win: 'This has completed my cycling career'

Wout van Aert's win at Paris-Roubaix will stay with cycling fans for a long time. None more so than Nathan Van Hooydonck, who after his enforced retirement as a rider now works as a staff member at Visma | Lease a Bike. The close friend of Van Aert suddenly found himself playing a crucial role in the Hell of the North — and concludes that the win has made his cycling career complete.

Back to 12 April, and Van Hooydonck is part of the Visma setup. He explains his role in detail on Dutch language cycling podcast De Rode Lantaarn. "At pretty much every classic we've had guests. We have a separate car, and I usually bring one colleague and a maximum of two guests — so four of us in the car for the whole day. Those are sponsors, or contacts, or people considering investing in the team."

Paris-Roubaix was different. "We had a last-minute cancellation. We couldn't fill the spot, so we went with three. I didn't have to sell anything — I could just be myself and get completely absorbed in the race." There was still work to be done, though. "We had two wheel service points, halfway along the cobbled sectors."

That plan was thrown into disarray by the race organisation. "Just before the race it was decided that you could no longer stand halfway along a sector with wheels. Maarten Wynants had spent three days working on the wheel and bidon plan. So we went to the [Arenberg] Forest. Without wheels — we didn't need them."

Then Van Hooydonck looked at his phone. "Suddenly I got a message: we've got stuck because of the U23 race, we won't make it to the Forest in time. I thought: the chance of needing a wheel in the Forest is really, really high. So we sprinted flat out to the car to grab the wheels."

Suddenly the Belgian had a crucial role. "Without exaggerating, I think we arrived at the exit of the Forest about three minutes before the riders. The people who were supposed to be there arrived after the first riders had already passed," he recalls. Fortunately for Visma | Lease a Bike, nothing went wrong. "Nothing to do. All the boys rode through," Van Hooydonck laughs.

He did play a key role in communications, though. "I knew Van der Poel had punctured. Colleagues were saying he was already gone, but I was one hundred per cent certain he hadn't ridden past yet. Then Mathieu came through — and there was a huge gap. That's when I really started to believe."

Quickly out of the Forest and on to the finish. "We drove back — my heart rate was climbing by then. From the Forest we drove to the finish. We watched the last fifty kilometres on the big screen." The tension there was almost unbearable. "Emiel [Vaessen, Visma's communications officer] was tracking absolutely everything."

Van Hooydonck kept his eyes fixed on the screen. "At that point in the race, everything that matters is on screen. The groups had formed, so all I needed was the time gaps." When did he truly start believing? "I always believed, actually — I always believed in Wout. Once Van der Poel was a really long way back, and especially when the two of them rode clear together, I thought: the last time Pogačar was beaten was on the Champs-Élysées." That time, too, by Van Aert.

He had confidence in his compatriot from the outset. "I thought he looked good. The way he looked gave me a lot of confidence — different from the year before. I had a lot of faith, but I wasn't certain. I was absolutely incredibly stressed — I've never experienced anything like it."

So he couldn't watch the screen. "I saw him go, then looked away again, then looked into the distance around the corner... he just had two metres. He kept going, kept sprinting, Pogačar sat up. I started celebrating way too early," the former professional recalls of that astonishing finish.

And so his conclusion: "We did this — but above all, Wout did this. It was an emotion I've rarely felt. That's hard to put into words. It came from so deep... so special. This has completed my cycling career. This is what I wanted to do with him as a rider — that didn't happen. But in this role, I can still be part of it."