Wout van Aert says he may have been in his best physical condition ever prior to his horror crash at Dwars door Vlaanderen, which ended the first part of the Belgian’s season and landed him in hospital.
Van Aert fractured seven ribs, his collarbone and sternum in the high-speed crash which wiped out multiple other riders, including Lidl-Trek’s Jasper Stuyven.
Speaking in a new documentary released by his team, Visma-Lease a Bike, Van Aert reflected on the shock he experienced in the immediate aftermath of the crash.
Television pictures at the time showed Van Aert sitting on the road with his shoulder visibly bruised and battered. The documentary included the same clip in which his screams of pain could also be heard.
"I wanted to get to the side of the road immediately, as soon as possible," Van Aert said as he recalled the crash. "When I tried to move, I felt that there was something wrong with my shoulder and with my hip. Then I had a lot of pain until I was given strong medication at the hospital so that first half hour was truly terrible."
"The collarbone fracture was something I could already tell," he added. "But that was confirmed in the x-ray pictures. And then they said that they thought my ribs were broken too. Then the next doctor came to see me and told me that I had broken seven ribs and, on top of that, my sternum was also broken.
"At that moment, I was pretty calm. Then I said to myself 'I hope there won’t be too many doctors because there will only be more injuries.'"
Van Aert was targeting victory in either the Tour of Flanders or Paris-Roubaix before heading to Italy for a debut at the Giro d’Italia. However, his injuries meant he was unable to race the two Monuments, Visma later said that he would not recover in time for the Giro.
"S**t that’s the end of the race," Visma DS Grischa Niermann said on race radio at the time. “That’s the end of the Spring Classics and the Giro.”
Four weeks later, Van Aert climbed back onto his bike and was able to ride outside for the first time after the crash. He rued his misfortune in the documentary and spoke about how a rider’s luck can suddenly change in professional cycling.
"According to the people guiding me, my recovery is progressing well," Van Aert explained. "It's definitely a great feeling to put on the cycling shorts again although that was a challenge as well.
"Then it quickly becomes confronting that I might have been in my best condition ever and suddenly I'm knocked back to the worst possible condition. It definitely feels good to be a bit active again and it will truly be blissful when I can go outside again."
Van Aert explained that he watched the Tour of Flanders from home but was unable to tune into Paris-Roubaix. His long term rival, Mathieu van der Poel, won both races.
He said that around the time of Roubaix, he experienced the most difficult period mentally of his recovery from injury.
"I wasn’t at home for Roubaix, I followed it from a distance," he said. "But I might have found it more difficult. I started to realise that it wasn’t over yet. That I was still very tired and that I still had to recover from my wounds and that I was still very far from training."
"In combination with watching one of the most beautiful races of the year, that was mentally the hardest moment for me in the past weeks."
It is not yet known when the Belgian will be able to return to competition. His next big scheduled objective is the road race and time trial at the Paris Olympics.
A return to the Tour de France before could be a possibility, but that is also still unclear.
