57 days after his 2024 season was put on hold due to a brutal crash at Dwars door Vlaanderen, Wout van Aert (Visma-Lease a Bike) finally found himself back in a race peloton on stage 1 of the Tour of Norway on Thursday. However, it wasn’t a return to complete normality for the Belgian star.
After recovering from a fractured collarbone, ribs and sternum, rather than compete for the win as he likely would have pre-crash, Van Aert had to “just ride there and suffer in the bunch."
Van Aert finished 60th, 2:52 down on stage winner Thibau Nys (Lidl-Trek) after finishing his work for Bart Lemmen, who was fourth at the line.
This result didn't register below the expectations Van Aert or Visma-Lease a Bike had about his first race back, but the born-champion in Van Aert couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed, all the same.
“It may be noticeable that I am not very happy, because I had not hoped to suffer like this. But I just have to get on with it now,” Van Aert told Sporza after the stage.
“It is not a normal feeling for me to just ride there and suffer in the peloton, but I know that this is part of it now.”
Van Aert narrowly avoided disaster in the final up to Voss Resort when he tapped the back wheel of a Uno-X rider 2.1km from the line. After already feeling the pain having helped get his teammates in position, he opted to stop his effort.
“It went quite well. It was a controlled race, which was welcome. It was a tough course. I am happy with how it went,” said Van Aert as he summed up the day to Belgian media.
“I tried to keep the guys in position in the final, but it was hectic. We weren't always staying together fully. I wanted to get them at least within 1.5km of the line, but then I tapped the rider in front of me and I lost my momentum.
“I then decided to let go. Things were already on the limit for me from the start of the final climb. I could feel in my lungs that it had been a long time since I had gone so deep.”
Today’s stage finishes with another, harder, uphill test to Gullingen on a 5.5km climb averaging 8.7% . It's not a day for Van Aert to compete but another great chance to get some hard racing in the legs and rebuild his rhythm for goals still to come in 2024.
“I knew from training that I shouldn't be afraid to sit on the bike for 3.5 hours. It's often only afterwards that I feel how I'm doing, that's why I might sound a bit hesitant,” Van Aert said.
“That things can only get better from now on? I hope so too. Luckily I didn't have any problems on the bike and hopefully, I can recover well now.”
After the crash in Belgium ruled him out of the rest of the Classics and forced him to pull out before making his Giro d’Italia debut, Van Aert is now in contention for a spot on Visma-Lease A Bike’s Tour de France team.
Team boss Richard Plugge recently told Cyclingnews that the team “are very hopeful that Wout can come to the Tour de France." But that will largely depend on how he progresses at the Tour of Norway with 36 days until the Grand Depart in Florence.
If not at the Tour, then Van Aert will be hoping to be back at his maximum for the Paris Olympics, where he’ll take on the time trial and road race on July 27 and August 3.
