ALL IN FOR THE COBBLED CLASSICS – CAN WOUT VAN AERT’S ADJUSTED PROGRAMME FINALLY DELIVER THE VICTORY HE LONGS FOR?
We’re barely more than a week into 2025, but already things are looking up for Wout van Aert. He began the year with not one but two victories on the cyclocross circuit; first on Saturday at the Superprestige Gullegem, his first win of any kind since September, then again, the very next day, at a mud-caked Dendermonde at his first World Cup appearance of the season. Back to winning ways and having, in his own words at the end of the latter race, “great fun”, the Belgian is clearly in a good place again, now recovered from the nasty crash and subsequent knee injury that brought his road season to an abrupt end at the Vuelta a España four months ago.
This is the beginning of what you sense will be a very important year for Van Aert. Though still recognised as one of very best riders in the world, his star has dimmed a little the past couple of years, as, for a variety of reasons, he has fallen a little short of the heights he’d previously scaled. In 2024 that was a consequence, mostly, of unlucky crashes, the incident at the Vuelta coming after an even heavier fall at Dwars door Vlaanderen in March that ruled him out of the rest of the Classics season and the Giro d’Italia. But even before then, during his injury-free 2023, he laboured for major results, going winless at the Tour de France for the first time in his career, and only managing one victory at any WorldTour race all year.
For all his success, there’s still a nagging sense that Van Aert’s palmarès don’t quite reflect his extraordinary talent. Whereas he and his eternal rival Mathieu van der Poel used to be seen as evenly matched, the latter has been clearly superior of late, racing away to six Monument victories and a world title, while Van Aert remains stuck on just the one. Having turned 30 last September, he’ll be conscious that there won’t be too many years left at his peak to extend that tally.
Van Aert may have had this in mind when organising his schedule for the upcoming 2025 season, which he announced earlier this week. The headline news was that he once again hopes to make his Giro d’Italia debut, having been denied the opportunity last year due to his springtime crash. As someone whose main priorities have always been the spring Classics and the Tour de France, it’s difficult to squeeze the Giro into his schedule in May, but no pro career ever feels fully complete without ever appearing at the Italian Grand Tour, and he remains eager to do so. Stage wins are the goal, one of which would see him enter the elite club of riders to have won a stage at all three of the Grand Tours.
As well as the Giro, Van Aert’s usual targets of the spring cobbled Classics and the Tour de France are once again top of the agenda. But, whereas one Italian race has been added to his schedule, another is notably missing — Milan-Sanremo. You would have thought that ‘La Primavera’ would be among Van Aert’s top priorities for any season. Not only is it one of the biggest one-day races on the calendar, and a precious chance to win a Monument, but it’s also one that’s very well-suited to his attributes, as evidenced by his record of having won once and made the podium another two times. In fact, it remains the only Monument Van Aert has succeeded in winning, and given the way it rewards riders with a quick sprint finish like him while weeding out the pure sprinters, it’s maybe a surprise he hasn’t won it more. Given the lack of Monument titles on his palmarès, surely he can’t pass up arguably his best chance of winning one?
Yet, Van Aert seems to have fallen out of love with Milan-Sanremo. The race was also a casualty of his modified spring programme for last year, when he skipped it for the first time since 2018, and, despite the unfortunate way the rest of his campaign played out, he has shown no desire to return this year. Just as he has stopped appearing at Strade Bianche since the 2021 edition, another major Classic he’s won in the past and is seemingly custom-made for, he appears to have lost interest in Italy’s other leading spring Classic.
Instead, Van Aert is going all in for the two cobblestone Monuments. Last year, he explained that he felt missing Milan-Sanremo was “a necessary choice to be in the best possible shape for the start of the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix”, and we can assume that he’s applied the same reasoning this year. From the Opening Weekend double header of Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne, to the later Flemish week races E3 Saxo Classic, Gent-Wevelgem and Dwars door Vlaanderen, he is embarking on a full programme of cobbled Classics. But while others (likely including rival Van der Poel) will spend the weekends in between riding in Italy, he’ll travel to Tenerife to train at altitude.
All this reveals just how badly Van Aert wants to win the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix. Despite winning virtually every other major cobbled Classic on the calendar, he’s never won either of these races, his best results to date being runner-up 2020 in the former (which he lost to Van der Poel by the closest of photo finishes) and runner-up in 2022 in the latter. As a Belgian rider, these cobbled Classics are the pinnacle, and worth sacrificing comparably prestigious races for a greater chance there. Whether or not he manages to eventually win one will be one of the major factors to weigh up when assessing, come retirement, the extent to which his career was a success. He’ll be hoping his bright start to 2025 is an omen that this will at last be the year he does so.
