📽️ Following Wout van Aert during first cyclocrosscross-training Visma | Lease a Bike-rider

Wout van Aert makes his comeback in cyclocross on Saturday with the World Cup of Antwerp, where he also takes on his rival Mathieu van der Poel directly. The latter already returned in the cross of Namen and wa simmediately successful. Ahead of the Antwerp cyclocross, Van Aert only rode through first cross training on Wednesday.

The Visma | Lease a Bike figurehead has just returned home for a few days after a training camp in Spain with his team. It was not all sunshine for Van Aert, who earlier this week had to face a strong storm. Now that Van Aert is back in Belgium, he can focus on cyclo-cross for a few weeks, as the Antwerp cyclo-cross starts the busy Christmas period and Van Aert will show his face with five races in the last part of December.

Now that his comeback is rapidly approaching, it is also necessary for Van Aert to get the feeling again and so he got on his cyclocross bike on Wednesday for a ride through the woods. In total, the all-rounder had almost seventy kilometers on the counter and eight hundred altimeters. With the text "back to school" on his Strava , VanAert clearly had to get used to it again, while Daan Soete recorded the ride on video for Instagram.

Van der Poel, too, had barely taken the cross bike off the bike before his successful comeback in Namen, just twice. Nonetheless, he has a very tough task ahead of him to make things difficult for Van der Poel in Antwerp and in the clashes thereafter. Last season Van der Poel was clearly the better rider in each of their three encounters. The last time Van Aert managed to beat his rival in a cyclocross was at the beginning of 2024, in Benidorm.

After Antwerp, Van Aert and Van der Poel will meet in Hofstade (Dec. 22) and Loenhout (Dec. 29). Meetings in Mol (Jan. 2) and Zonhoven (Jan. 4) will follow in the new year. For now, there does not seem to be a clash between the two classics during the World Championships in Hulst (Feb. 2), but Van Aert has not completely ruled out the option.