Wout van Aert saw little reason to sugarcoat his second-place finish at the X2O Trofee Baal on New Year’s Day. Mathieu van der Poel has been unbeatable on the cyclocross circuit this winter and the world champion duly continued his winning streak on Monday, but Van Aert confessed to surprise at a margin of victory just shy of two minutes.
“I was shocked by that, to be honest. Mathieu was super strong,” Van Aert said afterwards, according to Het Laatste Nieuws.
“If you win by two minutes, you are simply much better. Is this a disappointment? Well, I had hoped to make it more difficult for Mathieu. But I also know what I am doing.”
Van Aert has, of course, scaled back his cyclocross commitments this winter with a view to arriving fresher at the Spring Classics than he has done in years past.
The Belgian will forgo the World Championships and he now has just two cyclocross dates left on his calendar, the X2O Trofee Koksijde on Thursday and the Benidorm World Cup on January 21. In between, Van Aert will join his Visma-Lease A Bike team for a training camp on the road.
“If you see how Mathieu is riding now, I have to be realistic,” Van Aert conceded on Monday.
“It will be very difficult to win one of the two races I still have to ride. It is what it is.”
Van Aert's realism is all part of a grand plan.
Although he won E3 Harelbeke and conceded Gent-Wevelgem to teammate Christophe Laporte last Spring, he fell short in the races that defined his Classics campaign. He placed fourth at the Tour of Flanders and took third at Paris-Roubaix after a late puncture.
Speaking to Wielerflits, Van Aert’s new coach Mathieu Heijboer explained that the Visma-Lease A Bike rider had deliberately lightened his cyclocross load with a view to performing early April.
“We want to continue to improve in a steady manner, to be ultimately at our best in April,” Heijboer said while watching Van Aert race on Monday.
“This means that you do not have a peak now, but that you increase a little every month. It was different last year. Back then, his level was also very high in the cyclocross period. That was followed by a dip, both physically and mentally, and he was also ill. And in the end, we suddenly ran out of time when it came to preparing for the Spring.”
Some have linked Van Aert’s switch in emphasis to the change in coach, but Heijboer insisted that the decision to reduce his cyclocross calendar had its genesis in a debrief after the 2023 Classics campaign with his previous trainer Marc Lamberts, who has joined Bora-Hansgrohe this winter to work with Primož Roglič.
“Just to be clear: that was not my decision. It was already decided in the evaluation after the Spring Classics at the end of April,” Heijboer told Wielerflits.
“Marc also participated in that, and he evaluated it at the time. It’s something that Wout himself strongly supports. At times, it’s felt like it was framed as if I had decided it, but that's not the case at all. Wout really wants this himself.”
Heijboer downplayed the idea that Van Aert’s morale has suffered from the series of defeats he has endured at Van der Poel’s hands in recent weeks, not least because the Dutchman will be his principal rival on the cobbles.
“That's not an issue at all. The only thing that matters to him is that he enjoys cyclocross,” Heijboer said. "He’s competing in a discipline that he loves."
Van Aert will start his road season with the Clásica Jaén, the Volta ao Algarve and Opening Weekend, but he will surprisingly forgo Strade Bianche and Milan-San Remo, races he won in 2020. That decision, Heijboer explained, was taken with the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix in mind.
“Our altitude camp is now planned shortly before the Flemish classics. That coincides with Milan-San Remo, so we had to sacrifice that,” Heijboer said. “Sacrificing Strade Bianche was even more difficult for Wout.
“But look, making choices is never easy, and in the light of the bigger picture, it’s a decision that he supports.”
