Boven: "After Hulst, Van Aert felt the spark, but Van der Poel crushed it in Baal"

Wout van Aert begins his last cyclo-cross race of this winter on Sunday. In Benidorm, Spain, the Belgian rider from Visma | Lease a Bike concludes a period in which he mainly focused on the 'bigger picture', if we are to believe team director Jan Boven. IDLProCycling.com spoke to him the day before the Costa Blanca cyclo-cross.

Boven is a seasoned professional. During the hours he spends in a Visma | Lease a Bike jacket, he is completely dedicated to his work. The results of his son Lars - who finished third and sixth in his first WorldTour race, the Tour Down Under - are therefore not something he wants to discuss too broadly, although father Jan's eyes did sparkle when we broached the subject.

So, back to Visma | Lease a Bike. It starts with Van Aert, Fem Van Empel, and Sophie von Berswordt at the cross in Benidorm. For Boven, it will be his last collaboration with his Belgian ace this winter, but how does he look back on it now - in advance? "Ultimately, we went in with a very different objective than last year. This year, the goal was to ride some great cyclo-cross races, although we did notice Wout really felt the spark after the race in Hulst. But then Mathieu van der Poel was so good in Baal that the thought was immediately crushed for Wout."

That spark that Boven mentions, how should we understand it? "He was really convinced that he had a good feeling, but in Baal, Mathieu put him under so much pressure that he had to start making mistakes." The winner in Van Aert was a bit upset about that. "After Baal, he was disappointed, but ultimately he was kind of okay with it when we related it back to the bigger plan. He knows where he wants to be this spring and has now also made a good step at the training camp. After the cyclo-cross race in Benidorm, he will stay another week with his family to do another good training block."

What does this cyclo-cross winter - where results were not sacred - mean for the coming years? "I have no idea," admits Boven, who once again reiterated that his pupil will not be racing the Cyclo-cross World Championships. "After Roubaix, we will evaluate this block and then in September, we will see how we will approach the coming year. He still enjoys cyclo-cross, but also knows that certain choices have consequences and that he must continue to make those choices. He really wants to win Roubaix and Flanders, and every year that doesn't happen is a lost year."

Van Empel is spared from mishaps ahead of Benidorm

Van Empel is also returning to Spain after a few weeks without competition. The world champion decided after the cyclo-cross race in Koksijde to skip the races in Zonhoven and the National Championships, thereby giving herself a chance to regroup after a period of setbacks. She fell on her knee during a training camp in Spain in December, then fell ill, and on New Year's Day, her other knee was battered after a slide. You'd reset for less.

"We have been able to do a good training block and Fem is fit," says Boven. "We consciously made the decision to skip those races with Fem and we still fully stand behind that decision. That heavy fall in Spain and the illness took a lot of energy, preventing her from really being able to train. If you eventually want to be good at the World Championships in Tábor, you have to take some rest at some point. All in all, it was purely a sporting choice. It has worked out well, as the problems seem to be a thing of the past."