{"id":376515,"date":"2026-01-18T06:58:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-18T06:58:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/376515\/"},"modified":"2026-01-18T06:58:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-18T06:58:08","slug":"van-aert-logs-184km-training-ride-just-two-weeks-after-fracturing-his-ankle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/376515\/","title":{"rendered":"Van Aert logs 184km training ride just two weeks after fracturing his ankle"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/cyclinguptodate.com\/wout-van-aert\" title=\"Wout van Aert\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Wout van Aert<\/a> is recovering from his ankle fracture at a remarkable speed. Just weeks after a season-ending crash at the cyclocross in Mol, the <a href=\"https:\/\/cyclinguptodate.com\/team-visma-lease-a-bike\" title=\"Team Visma | Lease a Bike\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Team Visma | Lease a Bike<\/a> leader is already back to logging massive distances at the team training camp in Spain.<\/p>\n<p>The Belgian star&#8217;s winter campaign came to a sudden halt in late December. During a duel with Mathieu van der Poel in Mol, Van Aert crashed heavily on the frozen course. The diagnosis was a fractured ankle, which required surgery to insert a screw.<\/p>\n<p>Until very recently, Van Aert was seen wearing a large protective boot at the team&#8217;s media presentation. The swelling was significant, and his cyclocross season was obviously over. However, his return to the bike has been much faster than anticipated.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\nA rapid increase in volume<a href=\"https:\/\/cyclinguptodate.com\/cyclocross\/back-on-the-bike-already-wout-van-aert-rides-outside-as-gruesome-instagram-photos-reveal-reality-of-season-ending-ankle-injury\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">On Monday, Van Aert completed his first ride since the surgery<\/a>, a modest 33-kilometer spin that he described on social media as a &#8220;victory in itself.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Since then, the progression has been absolutely exponential. After traveling to the team&#8217;s training camp in Spain on Tuesday, he rode just under 60 kilometers. On Wednesday, he broke the 100-kilometer barrier. On Thursday, he extended that to 144 kilometers.<\/p>\n<p>By Friday, Van Aert was back to serious endurance work. According to his Strava data, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.strava.com\/activities\/17071305692\/overview?utm_medium=web_embed&amp;utm_source=activity_embed&amp;strava_deeplink_url=strava%3A%2F%2Factivities%2F17071305692\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">he completed a 184-kilometer ride<\/a>, which he titled as &#8220;smooth ride&#8221;, spending approximately six hours in the saddle.Van Aert is not riding alone. During Friday&#8217;s long session, he was accompanied by a strong group of teammates, including <a href=\"https:\/\/cyclinguptodate.com\/matteo-jorgenson\" title=\"Matteo Jorgenson\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Matteo Jorgenson<\/a>, Christophe Laporte, <a href=\"https:\/\/cyclinguptodate.com\/edoardo-affini\" title=\"Edoardo Affini\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Edoardo Affini<\/a>, Timo Kielich, Loe van Belle, and Niklas Behrens. Team manager <a href=\"https:\/\/cyclinguptodate.com\/grischa-niermann\" title=\"Grischa Niermann\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Grischa Niermann<\/a> didn not want to miss the party and also joined the ride.<\/p>\n<p>Van Aert&#8217;s season is expected to start at the end of February, debuting at Omloop Nieuwsblad. He plans to ride the first three momunents &#8211; Milano-Sanremo, Tour of Flanders, Paris-Roubaix &#8211; and the Tour-Vuelta double.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wout van Aert is recovering from his ankle fracture at a remarkable speed. Just weeks after a season-ending&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":376516,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,115533,119780,113658,101,36242,56,54,55,8783],"class_list":{"0":"post-376515","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-cycling","9":"tag-edoardo-affini","10":"tag-grischa-niermann","11":"tag-matteo-jorgenson","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-team-visma-lease-a-bike","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-unitedkingdom","17":"tag-wout-van-aert"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=376515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376515\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/376516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=376515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=376515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=376515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}