Wout van Aert has confirmed that Jumbo-Visma will make an all-out bid for both the green and yellow jerseys in this July’s Tour de France, with his own goal of winning the points competition creating a potentially significant shift in his team duties compared to 2021.
Van Aert won three stages in last year’s Tour de France, including both in the final weekend, but finished fifth in the points competition.
But speaking to Het Laatste Nieuws newspaper from a training camp in Sierra Nevada, Spain, this July the Belgian says his bid for green will take priority at least on some of the Tour's mountainous days over potential teamwork duties for Jumbo-Visma GC leaders Primož Roglič and Jonas Vingegaard.
The odds of Van Aert making a bid for the upcoming Critérium du Dauphiné overall is less likely, HLN reports, as he has not done much specific work on his climbing at the Sierra Nevada camp.
“Most of the Tour team will be there [at the Dauphiné], so it will be useful to see how well we are working as a unit and to take one last step towards the Tour,” Van Aert pointed out.
“The Dauphiné is an important race and it's been a while since I've ridden it, and there are some hilly transition stages where there will probably be a sprint.”
While on a personal level much of the Dauphiné would represent a confidence-building exercise for Van Aert, he said, the Belgian’s goals at the Tour are much more tangible. And as he noted to HLN, there will likely be some big differences compared to 2021.
“That year I rode for the team, and I could now and then choose a stage to go for my own success,” Van Aert observed.
“Now the focus is more on the green jersey, which I will have to work at every day. I'm going to have to take points in the intermediate sprints, that's new. Then I will need my rest in the mountains every now and then – a relative rest.
“It will be slightly different, but the further we go to the end of the Tour, the more the team can count on me as a helper.”
Set to finish on Sunday, the Jumbo-Visma altitude training camp in Spain had gone well, Van Aert said, although he had taken a bit of a break after Liège-Bastogne-Liège before starting to rebuild his form for the summer so his legs were initially a little ring-rusty.
But for the summer, Van Aert said that Jumbo-Visma’s belief in overall victory in the Tour was currently “very big” with the team “going full” for both green and yellow. And although he also has his eye on the opening time trial in Denmark “which I hope to win,” he revealed that he will skip both the Belgian National and the World Championships Time Trial events this year.
“For now, it’s not happening,” Van Aert, the silver medallist on home soil in the World’s TT last year, said about sacrificing the same event this autumn in his all out bid for a road race rainbow jersey.
“We set a number of goals at the beginning of this year, and the [World Championships] road race is certainly one of them. It’s a goal. I learned last year that it's hard to focus on both.”
