Eindelijk! - finally! - was the single-word headline Belgian sports news agency Sporza used to describe Wout van Aert's victory in the Vuelta a España on Monday, and after one of the longest gaps of his career between wins, eindelijk surely summed up perfectly how Van Aert must have felt after his latest triumph, too.
Several factors have likely played their part in Van Aert's 2024 dearth of victories. But his terrible fall in Dwars door Vlaanderen this April, which sidelined the badly injured Belgian for the Giro d'Italia and only saw the Visma-Lease a Bike rider return to racing in late June, was almost certainly one of the biggest.
