Man, this guy sure has some bad luck. Thankfully this time, the damage wasn\u2019t so bad for Belgian star Wout van Aert.<\/p>\n
The Visma-Lease a Bike showed at the start of the Tour Auvergne-Rh\u00f4ne-Alpes with several bandages and gauze on his body.<\/p>\n
The 2026 Paris-Roubaix winner told Sporza<\/a> he crashed while training earlier this week.<\/p>\n \u201cI crashed on Monday with my TT bike,\u201d Van Aert said ahead of Stage 1. \u201cBut the damage is limited.\u201d As far as the ankle, he didn\u2019t miss much time off the bike, although his cyclocross season was over. He was going to do a shortened one anyway, although he did leave the door open that he may extend it. He had been riding well, too. It was at Mol when he and long-time rival Mathieu van der Poel were about to have a classic duel. Unfortunately on a snowy and slippery corner, he biffed it. And that was that.<\/p>\n This latest incident, however, appears unlikely to affect his immediate racing plans, unlike several other crashes he has suffered in recent years. (Remember Dwars door Vlaanderen? The Vuelta? Guy\u2019s had a rough time these past few years.)<\/p>\n The Belgian stressed that he escaped serious injury and remains focused on the days ahead. While he admitted the fall was not ideal, he suggested the wounds are largely superficial and should not prevent him from competing.<\/p>\n After everything that has happened so far this year, simply avoiding another major setback may feel like a victory in itself.<\/p>\n Stage 1 of the Tour Auvergne-Rh\u00f4ne-Alpes goes from Vizille to Saint-Ismier for a total of 146.2km. There are four categorized climbs. The race has all sorts of big names, and two Canucks: Hugo Houle and Michael Leonard.<\/a> Canadian Cycling Magazine will have a report after each stage, and you can catch the broadcast on FloBikes.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Man, this guy sure has some bad luck. Thankfully this time, the damage wasn\u2019t so bad for Belgian…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":722031,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,260920,635,75501,75504,82,260423,12290],"class_list":["post-722030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-criterium-du-dauphine","tag-cycling","tag-hugo-houle","tag-michael-leonard","tag-sports","tag-tour-auvergne-rhone-alpes","tag-wout-van-aert"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/722030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=722030"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/722030\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/722031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=722030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=722030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=722030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Van Aert\u2019s 2026 road season had already been interrupted by bad luck long before it began. A broken ankle suffered in a cyclo-cross crash delayed the start of his road campaign. Then he got sick, screwing up his training and race plans.<\/p>\n