When Wout van Aert announced last week that his main goal for 2024 will be the Giro d'Italia, pundits speculated that a push for a Grand Tour overall classification would mean the Belgian would set aside is Classics ambitions.
Not so, said Van Aert in an interview with Eurosport's Laura Meseguer, recorded while Van Aert was in Colombia for the Giro di Rigo. The Jumbo-Visma rider emphasised that the Tour of Flanders is his "main dream" in addition to the Olympic Games in Paris.
"It will be a special year with the Olympic Games in the middle of the summer, so for sure there will be a focus on that. But the main dream remains the same, to win one of the Flemish classics," Van Aert said, appearing to stumble on the English name for the Tour of Flanders.
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Van Aert has started De Ronde five times in his career so far, finishing in the top 10 in four editions, coming second to Mathieu van der Poel in 2020. This year he was with Van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck) and eventual winner Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) until the last lap but lost contact and then was out-sprinted for the podium by Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek).
He promised to keep going after a victory in his home Monument.
"That is something I will be trying to achieve until I have it."
Van Aert has also started the Tour de France five seasons in a row and has been invaluable in the past two editions for Jonas Vingegaard. He will be taking on a different Grand Tour for the first time in 2024.
At the time of the interview, Van Aert had not yet announced the Giro as a goal, but said, "I'm looking forward to maybe doing something else than what I did before."
Van Aert reduced his cyclocross campaign to a half dozen races, mainly centred around the Christmas holiday and leaving off the World Championships after he competed in a fuller calendar last season.
"Last year, I found it mentally difficult to focus on the cyclocross season and then move on to the spring," he said on the Jumbo-Visma website. "I didn't want to leave anything to chance with the Spring Classics."
Toward that end, Van Aert took to the course of the Dwars door Vlaanderen on Tuesday with his teammates Edoardo Affini, Maarten Wynants, Grisha Niermann, Mick and Tim van Dijke and newcomer Matteo Jorgenson.
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