Wout van Aert has had a very packed season and after a successful Tour de France the Belgian is going to be returning to competition at the Deutschland Tour where he will be preparing for the final months of the road campaign.
Van Aert had a short cyclocross campaign last winter and only a few weeks after the Cyclocross World Championships he began his season on the road. Unlike Mathieu van der Poel, the Belgian rider values a lot racing and getting into the rhythm, so he began his year at the Clásica Jaén Paraiso Interior where he supported Ben Tulett and then rode the Volta ao Algarve – where he was second in the final time-trial. He did this ahead of the Opening Weekend but there he didn’t get any meaningful result. Only in March did he do an altitude camp and then returned for the main cobbled classics block where he finished 15th at the E3 Saxo Classic, second at Dwars door Vlaanderen and then fourth at both Tour of Flanders and Amstel Gold Race.
The Belgian would end his spring campaign with a second at the Brabantse Pijl and fourth at Amstel Gold Race, before falling ill and starting the Giro d’Italia a few weeks later in poor form. Still he managed to win the ‘Strade Bianche stage’ and go on to support Simon Yates to overall victory. In June he recovered from those efforts and trained at altitude ahead of the Tour where he supported Jonas Vingegaard to second place and on the final day of the race went on to win solo in Paris after an iconic attack on the climb to Montmartre.
The World Championships seem unlikely at this point in time for the Belgian but not out of the picture since there aren’t other clear goals he could aim for in September and October. But van Aert will start the Deutschland Tour after a few weeks of criteriums and recovering, where he will team up with Matthew Brennan. The Canadian classics, where Tadej Pogacar has also confirmed his presence, are also set for mid-September.