Why Wout van Aert can still shine in Strade Bianche despite a finale Van der Poel has criticised

Van der Poel won Strade Bianche in 2021, when the race still covered its more traditional distance of 184 kilometres. Back then, the hardest sector, Monte Sante Marie, came around 50 kilometres from the line, while the decisive finale featured only one pass over the Colle Pinzuto climb — now known as the settore Tadej Pogacar — and Le Tolfe. In 2024, that changed.

The organisers have never hidden the fact that they would love Strade Bianche to be regarded as the sixth Monument. And if you want to be a Monument, you need to go beyond 200 kilometres in distance. To make that happen, a new finishing circuit was introduced, pushing the total race length up from 184 to 215 kilometres.

In both 2024 and 2025, it immediately became clear that the longer and more demanding finale played into the hands of the pure climbers. In 2024, Tadej Pogacar attacked on Monte Sante Marie and rode 80 kilometres solo to victory. Last year, only Tom Pidcock could initially follow, but Pogacar dropped him on the final circuit and took his third Strade Bianche win.

The big question is how much Strade Bianche has really become a bridge too far for riders with a bit more size and power. Van der Poel only returned in 2023, when he was opening his season and was not yet at his best. Wout van Aert won Strade Bianche in 2020, but 2021 remains the last time he raced it. He finished fourth that day.

That means we cannot say for certain whether the 2024 and 2025 editions would indeed have been too hard for Van der Poel or Van Aert. What we can do, however, is look at the top-10 results from both editions. And there, Van Aert can still find encouragement. In 2024, proven classics men such as Toms Skujins, who finished second, Matej Mohoric in fifth and Christophe Laporte in tenth were all right there.

Last year, Tim Wellens was third, Magnus Cort sixth, Gianni Vermeersch seventh, Michael Valgren eighth and Roger Adrià tenth. True climbers such as Lenny Martinez, eighth in 2024, and Ben Healy, fourth in 2025, also cracked the top ten, but that was already happening in the old 184-kilometre editions as well. Riders with that profile were never absent from the upper reaches of the results in the previous format either.

Based on the results of the past two editions, it is fair to ask whether Strade Bianche has truly turned into a climbers’ race. Pogacar has stood head and shoulders above the field over the last two years, but would he not have done the same in the old 184-kilometre version? His solo from Monte Sante Marie might simply have been shorter. The more relevant question may be: who exactly would have been able to challenge him better in the previous format?

That is why it makes perfect sense for Van Aert to give it another go after several years away. He and Visma | Lease a Bike will also have seen that riders of his type remained fully involved in the finales of the last two editions of Strade Bianche. Pogacar and Pidcock were the outstanding men, but the more classical one-day specialists still managed to cling on after Monte Sante Marie and work their way back into contention.

On top of that, Van Aert will surely draw confidence from his Giro d’Italia stage win in 2025, which came on what felt like a mini version of Strade Bianche. He beat all the GC riders there, because Strade Bianche is not a race defined by long Alpine-style climbs and watts per kilo. It is shaped far more by short, steep gravel ramps, constant changes of rhythm, rolling terrain and, of course, the gravel itself.

Whether Van Aert can produce a top result in Strade Bianche therefore seems to depend far less on the course itself. In 2026, the route has in fact been shortened by 10 kilometres, with less elevation gain and slightly less gravel as well. For the Belgian of Visma | Lease a Bike, the bigger question is whether he has the form to match performances like those of Skujins and Mohoric.

His return to racing in Le Samyn came later than planned due to illness, so Van Aert had only a few days after his first race of 2026 to fully turn his attention to Strade Bianche. “I’ll be going to the start in Siena with more question marks than I had hoped,” he said tellingly earlier this week. Still, he also made it clear that he wants to fight for a top result.

If he manages that in Tuscany, Van Aert could end up opening the eyes of other classics specialists who may have quietly pushed Strade Bianche down their list. Pogacar will, under normal circumstances, still remain the standout favourite. But that then leaves the next question: are you just as willing to race for a podium place? Or do you only come to Tuscany if you believe you can genuinely make life difficult for the Slovenian of UAE Emirates-XRG in the fight for victory?

Bram van der Ploeg ( X: @BvdPloegg | email : [email protected])