Wout Watch: Van Aert eases Tour de France heartache by working his butt off elsewhere

Visma | Lease a Bike has almost reached the halfway point of the Tour de France. With Jonas Vingegaard in second place and a stage win under his belt, things aren’t going too badly. But it’s clear that one man is sorely missed. Wout van Aert had to miss the Tour, but he’s well on his way to fighting back. What has he been up to while his teammates were slogging it out in France?

Van Aert would normally be a fixture on the Visma | Lease a Bike roster. The 31-year-old Belgian hasn’t missed a single Tour de France since his debut in 2019 and has won no fewer than ten stages. After his now-iconic victory at Paris-Roubaix earlier this spring, the all-rounder opted for a break (with a gravel race in between) so he could start his preparations for July feeling fresh.

But things didn’t go very smoothly. The Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes was his main preparatory race, and he showed up there with a bandaged elbow. He had fallen while training on his time-trial bike, Van Aert reported. The first few days in France were therefore far from smooth, but he got his revenge by winning the fifth stage. All his problems forgotten?

Far from it. That night went anything but according to plan, and his elbow kept acting up. The problem only got worse, so the Visma | Lease a Bike rider decided to pull out. He returned to Belgium for an examination, where it turned out that his injury was more serious than expected. The result: no Tour de France for Wout van Aert. A huge disappointment, of course, for him and his team.

And so he had to make a change. “The mountains are calling,” he posted on Strava. And after another forced break, Van Aert arrived just a few days before the start of the Tour in... Italy. In Urtijëi, on the edge of the Dolomites, to be precise. A beautiful place to train, of course. At the foot of the magnificent Seceda mountain, he immediately completed a 113-kilometer training ride, covering well over 3,200 meters of elevation gain. The Gardena Pass, the Sella Pass, the Pordoi Pass… Big names!

Completing a training camp on your own can get pretty lonely. So it didn’t take long before Van Aert managed to round up some companions. Last Monday, he already went for a ride with Stan Dewulf (Decathlon CMA CGM). Together with “the man from Stavelse, Ghent,” he crossed the Swiss border and paid a visit to St. Moritz, among other places.

Will Wout van Aert ride the Vuelta?

The next day, he was with his childhood friend Daan Soete and teammate Bart Lemmen. “Three’s a crowd, ” as they say . This time, it wasn’t a training ride on a road bike—they’d swapped in some wider tires instead. On gravel bikes through the Italian border region around Bormio! One hundred kilometers, 3,000 meters of elevation gain. “With those tires, you could go to war,” said Van Aert.

So even though he couldn't compete in the Tour, the Belgian is doing just fine. It's not yet certain when he'll return to racing. The Vuelta a España is now on his 2026 plan.