{"id":519731,"date":"2026-03-05T06:39:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-05T06:39:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/519731\/"},"modified":"2026-03-05T06:39:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-05T06:39:12","slug":"wout-van-aert-suspects-sabotage-after-puncture-ruins-2026-return","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/519731\/","title":{"rendered":"Wout Van Aert Suspects Sabotage After Puncture Ruins 2026 Return"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Belgian rider Wout Van Aert said he suspects &#8220;sabotage&#8221; after his return to racing at the Samyn Classic was ruined by a late puncture.<\/p>\n<p>Van Aert returned to competition in the one-day event in Belgium on Tuesday after suffering a fractured ankle in a cyclo-cross race in January.<\/p>\n<p>But his hopes of a comeback victory were dashed by a puncture with 10km remaining in the race.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Suddenly, there were a lot of shards of glass on the road. It wasn&#8217;t deliberately aimed at me,&#8221; Van Aert told Sporza after the race, in which he eventually finished 60th.<\/p>\n<p>He said riders had already passed that section of the course five or six times earlier in the race without any problems, meaning the glass &#8220;couldn&#8217;t have ended up there by accident.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/65e042675a656.png\" style=\"width: 100%; height: auto;\" class=\"fr-fic fr-dii\"\/>Strade Bianche 2026 Next Target For Wout Van Aert<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Anyway, I tried to give chase, but you know you&#8217;re not going to ride faster than a peloton on your own&#8230; It smells like sabotage,&#8221; Van Aert added.<\/p>\n<p>Van Aert will return to action on Saturday at Strade Bianche in Italy, a race he won in 2020.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Belgian rider Wout Van Aert said he suspects &#8220;sabotage&#8221; after his return to racing at the Samyn Classic&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":519732,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,85],"class_list":["post-519731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cycling","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=519731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519731\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/519732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=519731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=519731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=519731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}