After being ruled out of racing the Tour de France with an elbow injury, Wout van Aert is deep into preparations for his revised goals of the Vuelta a España and Road World Championships.
The Belgian underwent surgery on the infected elbow, injured in a pre-Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes crash, in mid-June and was soon back on his bike.
This month, he has decamped to Italy to ramp up preparations for his late-season goals. After spending two weeks training in the Dolomites, he's now shifted to Livigno, close to the Swiss border.
Recent training rides have seen him pack in the climbs, and on Wednesday he tackled one of cycling's most iconic mountains, the Passo Stelvio, although he wasn't riding up the famed 48 hairpin turns.
Instead, the multi-disciplinary master headed off the beaten path for a marathon six-hour ride on the gravel tracks on the western side of the summit.
Gravel racer Aaron Van der Beken accompanied Van Aert as he dusted off his Cervélo Aspero-5 to take on the 104.8km adventure, which featured 3,400 metres of elevation.
As if all that climbing wasn't enough, videos posted to his Strava showed just how tough the terrain is as he battled up a brutal-looking goat path strewn with loose rock.
Van Aert, who this spring took a career-crowning triumph at Paris-Roubaix by getting the better of Tadej Pogačar, will get back to racing action on August 22 as the Vuelta a España kicks off with a 9km time trial in Monaco.
He'll return to the Spanish Grand Tour in search of more stage victories to add to the three he won on his debut two years ago. Back then, he looked on course to win both the points and mountain classifications before crashing out on stage 16 and subsequently missing the Road Worlds in Zurich, Switzerland.
This year's Road Worlds road race, held on September 27 on a hilly 273.2km course in Montréal, Canada, looks well-suited to Van Aert, so he'll be hoping to avoid a similar fate upon his return to Spain.
