Because the countdown to the 2024 season gathers tempo, Cyclingnews seems at a number of the key storylines that may outline the approaching 12 months in biking.
Wout van Aert can do nearly every part, however that doesn’t imply he can have all of it. On the eve of the 2024 season, the Belgian has been confronted with robust decisions.
Even in an period bedecked with the versatile items of males like Tadej Pogačar (UAE Staff Emirates) and Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck), no one has fairly the identical degree of dexterity as Van Aert, who glides with such putting ease between registers, on and off street. The acquainted, sleek pedal stroke is a continuing throughout the calendar, in cyclocross and in bunch sprints, amid the cobbles and hills of the Classics and on mountain passes of the Tour.
And but, as he approaches his thirtieth birthday, it’s nonetheless onerous to shake off the sense that Van Aert’s hefty palmarès in some way doesn’t fairly add as much as the sum of his variegated skills. He has already amassed extra victories of actual high quality than most riders handle in a lifetime – amongst them 9 Tour de France phases, Milan-San Remo, Gent-Wevelgem, Strade Bianche, Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and two wins at E3 Harelbeke, to not point out three Cyclocross World Championships titles – however at occasions his profession nonetheless feels outlined by the races he hasn’t but received.
That’s partly due to the unrelenting and infrequently unrealistic expectation of the biking fan, however largely because of the achievements of Pogačar and his everlasting rival Van der Poel over the previous three years. The Monument could also be a comparatively fashionable assemble, however within the twenty first century, it has change into the gold commonplace for measuring the achievements of one-day riders, and Van Aert’s account is mild.
Pogačar has now received 5 Monuments, whereas Van der Poel reached a operating tally of 4 due to his victories at Milan-San Remo and Paris-Roubaix final Spring. For good measure, the Dutchman added the Highway World Championships title at Van Aert’s expense in Glasgow, and he completed the 12 months because the inaugural winner of the Vélo d’Or for one-day riders.
Van Aert, in contrast, nonetheless has ‘solely’ one Monument to his title. Because the years have handed since his 2020 Milan-San Remo victory, that statistic has begun to look extra like an accusation than an achievement.
The Belgian was, by a distance, the peloton’s excellent rider when professional biking reopened for enterprise after the primary COVID-19 lockdown, and his victory towards Julian Alaphilippe at that August version of Milan-San Remo seemed set to be the primary of many over the Monument distance.
Within the intervening interval, nonetheless, Van Aert has endured repeated frustration within the largest one-day races, notching up six podium finishes in his ten Monument appearances since, in addition to silver medals on the Olympics and Worlds. His versatility was underlined by third place finally 12 months’s Liège-Bastogne-Liège, however his actual Classics ambitions are targeted squarely on the primary two Sundays in April, and the 2 races greatest tailor-made to his items.
On the Tour of Flanders, Van Aert was pipped by Van der Poel in 2020, denied a begin by COVID-19 in 2022 and overwhelmed into fourth by his two nice rivals final April. At this 12 months’s Paris-Roubaix, in the meantime, Van Aert suffered a merciless late puncture that denied him a joust to the road with Van der Poel, having positioned second behind a shocking Dylan van Baarle twelve months beforehand.
Van Aert’s determination to journey the Giro d’Italia as an alternative of the Tour de France in 2024 was the primary focus when the Belgian met the press on the Visma-Lease A Bike presentation on Thursday, however hypothesis about his true ambitions on the corsa rosa distracts from the plain: his major targets in 2024 are the identical as they ever had been. One-day occasions are what drive Van Aert, together with the Olympics and the World Championships, however, above all, the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix.
“My foremost dream stays the identical, to win one of many Flemish Classics,” Van Aert had already advised Eurosport final month throughout a go to to Colombia final month for Rigoberto Urán’s sportive. “It’s one thing I might be making an attempt to attain till I do it.”
The modifications
Van Aert was at all times prone to make some tweaks to his method in 2024, however the change turned extra radical by necessity when his long-term coach Marc Lamberts opted to observe Primoz Roglic to Bora-Hansgrohe on the finish of final season. Van Aert has since begun working with Mathieu Heijboer, and he famous that the Dutchman has positioned “a special emphasis” on his preparation.
The primary putting distinction is a notably pared-down cyclocross calendar that may see Van Aert forgo the World Championships and swap his focus totally to the street a lot ahead of in years previous. “We discovered that we had been placing an excessive amount of vitality into cyclocross with out realising it,” he defined on Thursday. “It was a troublesome determination, but it surely provides me some peace of thoughts.”
Since his first Classics marketing campaign with Crelan in 2018, Van Aert had sometimes begun his street marketing campaign at Opening Weekend, however in 2023, he delayed his seasonal debut till Tirreno-Adriatico. The experiment backfired. E3 Harelbeke victory however, it was onerous to shake the sense that Van Aert was nonetheless chasing kind proper into April. “I used to be by no means at my greatest final 12 months,” he conceded.
It’s hardly a shock, then, that 2024 will see Van Aert make his earliest ever begin to a street season, pinning on a quantity on the Clásica Jaén on February 12 earlier than driving the Volta ao Algarve and each Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne. Intriguingly, Van Aert will then spend virtually a month away from racing – skipping Strade Bianche, Tirreno-Adriatico and Milan-San Remo – earlier than returning to motion at E3 Harelbeke. He’s additionally slated to journey Dwars door Vlaanderen as a warm-up for the Tour of Flanders.
In 2023, Van Aert sat out Jumbo-Visma’s domination of Opening Weekend and was then anticipated to hit the bottom operating in March. This day out, the February slate of racing gives a gentler begin, and, maybe as importantly, will see him race alongside the remainder of Jumbo-Lease A Bike’s cobbled Classics unit from the outset relatively than parachute into the line-up at Harelbeke.
Every thing, it appears, is constructed across the first two Sundays in April, the place Van Aert will look to tip the steadiness of his unending contest with Van der Poel again in his favour after a few years the place the Dutchman has loved a transparent edge, each within the subject and on the street. Pogacar’s absence solely heightens the prospect of a WVA-VDP joust on the Ronde.
Van der Poel’s success of the previous two years has owed a lot to choosing and selecting his targets sagely, and, it should be stated, by racing extra cannily than he had in his youth. Much less can generally be extra, and Van Aert seems to have absorbed the lesson by simplifying his Spring marketing campaign.
That stated, Van Aert’s Giro debut is an intriguing prospect, notably on a route with two very long time trials. Given his performances within the mountains of the Tour, it’s not outlandish for Van Aert to focus on a excessive total end in Italy, however he seems – rightly – reluctant to sacrifice his competitiveness on the cobbles so as to take action. The corsa rosa, it appears, will solely start to occupy Van Aert’s ideas in earnest in April. Placing cameos on all terrains are absolutely a extra possible prospect than a GC problem, notably now that Cian Uijtdebroeks might be available after finishing his controversial switch from Bora-Hansgrohe.
Driving the Giro in favour of the Tour additionally permits Van Aert to tailor his personal build-up to the Olympic Video games, although it’s unclear if how useful that might be. Whereas it gives Van Aert area to work on his time trialling, historical past suggests it’d show a hindrance within the street race. For the reason that Olympics opened to professionals in 1996, in spite of everything, each males’s street race gold medallist has ridden the Tour beforehand. (In 2000, Jan Ullrich additionally raced the Vuelta earlier than profitable in Sydney).
However, Van Aert’s possible Vuelta a España debut in August appears destined to function a relatively public coaching camp for the Zürich World Championships. He will certainly recall how the pandemic-delayed Tour of 2020 noticed him at his sharpest for that 12 months’s Imola Worlds, even when he needed to accept irritating silver medals in every occasion.
In different phrases, whereas Van Aert’s new adventures in Grand Excursions draw the attention, the prizes he covets are the identical as ever – the largest one-day races. His 2024 programme is just a brand new street in the direction of the identical vacation spot.
