Evenepoel, Van Aert and Belgium’s Worlds balancing act

Where else but in Belgium? The intense focus on the national team’s expedition to the World Championships was laid bare by Sporza’s breathless coverage of Wout van Aert’s journey to Canada on Tuesday. 

The live ticker on the website told us that Van Aert had arrived at the airport only just in time for check-in but acknowledged it might have been a strategy to avoid giving an interview to the waiting camera crews. 

When the flight reached Montreal, its arrival was described as though it were the papal plane. Let the faithful rejoice, Wout is at the Worlds. His first training ride on Canadian roads, naturally, was also lovingly documented for the folks back home. 

By then, Belgium’s co-leader Remco Evenepoel had already been installed in Québec for the past two weeks. He started with victory at the Grand Prix Cycliste de Québec and he’s already claimed a world title, winning his fourth rainbow skinsuit in a row in the time trial. But the fast start to the transatlantic trip is only part of the story for a man whose main ambition is to regain the rainbow jersey he last won in 2022.

He has ample reason to believe. Evenepoel was a silver medallist in Kigali twelve months ago, the best of the rest behind a rampant Tadej Pogačar. In the Slovenian’s absence, Evenepoel is the logical favourite to win the rainbow bands, even if Van Aert could tell him that’s not always an advantage.

Van Aert lined up as favourite for the Worlds in Imola in 2020 and again on home roads in Leuven in 2021, but he came away disappointed on each occasion. But this time around, he approaches the big day with quiet belief. His sequence of displays at the Vuelta a España suggested he had hit upon his best run of form since his imperial phase from 2020 to 2022. Something’s got to give in the Belgian camp, and that’s all part of the appeal of the World Championships.

It’s different now, of course, but in days of yore, internal hierarchies in national teams weren’t necessarily decided by the law of the strongest but by the depth of their pockets. From various countries, tales abound of pre-race meetings where prospective leaders informed their teammates about precisely how much money their trade teams and sponsors were willing to put up as a bonus if they were to win the world title. Big strategic decisions were taken, at least in part, with the wallet.

Belgium was never entirely immune to such machinations, and pre-race accords of any kind don’t always hold up well amid the white heat of the final laps of the Worlds. Indeed, the Belgian national team, though the most successful at the elite men’s road race with 27 rainbow jerseys, has also known some spectacular and very public discord. 

In Ronse in 1963, Benoni Beheyt controversially won the title, apparently breaking the agreement to work for Rik Van Looy. In Barcelona in 1973, Eddy Merckx and Freddy Maertens spectacularly failed to dovetail in the finale, handing the title to Felice Gimondi, amid dark murmurings that the Belgian duo had been split along Campagnolo-Shimano lines in the winning move.

And more recently, Evenepoel and Van Aert had a distinctly uneasy coexistence at the Leuven Worlds. Van Aert could only manage 11th despite his sparkling form, and Evenepoel’s no-holds-barred aggression was blamed as a contributing factor. The polemic bubbled through the winter, and the mutual distrust quietly persisted into 2022. 

It probably informed Evenepoel’s eagerness to make the long-range assault in Wollongong that carried him to the rainbow jersey, while Van Aert was left hemmed in among the chasers behind. Van Aert took fourth place and gritted his teeth. What else could he do? In victory, every strategy is the right one. In defeat, every decision is up for question.

In Leuven, Evenepoel and Van Aert’s competing ambitions led to mutually assured destruction. In Wollongong, their respective aspirations were just as strong, but they complemented each other. The World Championships are always a balancing act, where every advantage carries a disadvantage, and vice versa.

With the riches at his disposal and with Pogačar absent, national coach Serge Pauwels has clear expectations for this Worlds – just win. But how?

Belgium’s problem is clearly a luxury one. In theory, Evenepoel’s wild gifts as an attacking force and Van Aert’s finesse and finishing speed give Pauwels a winning hand. In practice, playing those cards is always more complicated than it seems, especially when the Worlds can veer off in unexpected directions.

The last time the Worlds came to Canada in Hamilton in 2003, Spain’s primary option was Óscar Freire, with Alejandro Valverde as his foil. But the title ultimately fell to the third man, Igor Astarloa. Despite the pre-ordained plans, Spain always rode for the rider in the best position. Easier said than done.

“I want to maximise Belgium’s chances. Not Remco’s chances or Wout’s chances,” Pauwels told RTBF this week. “So it’s about joining forces, making sure we can play both cards. Perhaps not at the same time, but in any case, ensuring that they don’t ride against each other.”

Given their respective strengths, the obvious approach for Belgium would be to deploy Evenepoel as an attacker with Van Aert poised behind as something of a sweeper, ready to unleash his sprint if it all comes back together.

On the flip side, this demanding course suits Evenepoel better than Van Aert. There is no real point in having Van Aert sitting on the wheels for a sprint if he is distanced, and so it might be that Van Aert is sent up the road sooner to sow a bit of confusion, while Evenepoel waits for the finale with Isaac del Toro, Paul Seixas and the puncheurs.

The absence of Pogačar also changes the dynamic of the race. The Slovenian’s long-range solos in Zurich and Kigali conditioned the Worlds for everybody else. In Rwanda, it quickly turned into a strongest-man contest, and Evenepoel was, by a distance, the second best behind Pogačar. 

Without Pogačar, the dynamic changes. In Zurich, for instance, Belgium took up the reins early in a bid to isolate him – which only triggered his long-range attack. They will surely take a different approach without him.

“In a way, it’ll be a different race with him not starting, but in another way, he’s been so dominant that the peloton’s entire racing style has changed,” Pauwels told Daniel Benson this week.

Although Evenepoel won with a long-range solo in Australia four years ago, former national coach José De Cauwer doesn’t envisage the Belgian or his rivals mimicking Pogačar here. “Pogačar attacked on Mount Kigali last year, but I don’t see Evenepoel, Seixas, and Del Toro doing that 60km from the finish,” De Cauwer told Sporza.

With riders like Mathieu van der Poel and Tom Pidcock also in the fray, it promises to be a Worlds of many moving parts, rather than the Pogačar-centric exhibitions of the past two years. Smooth collaboration between Van Aert and Evenepoel will be key, as will the mediating role of road captain Tiesj Benoot. And given the strength of their leaders, Belgium will be required to provide much of the scaffolding at this Worlds. Alec Segaert can expect a long stint at the head of the bunch keeping tabs on the early break.

But this might also come down ultimately to the personalities and motivations of Van Aert and Evenepoel. Five years have passed since Leuven, and a lot of water has passed under the bridge.

Evenepoel remains resolutely Remco, but he is also a more grounded and less headstrong rider. His appetite for victories hasn’t been sated, of course, but he has won enough by now to have proven to all – and most of all to himself – that he’s not the untested kid of 2021, but one of the very best riders in the peloton. That brings motivation to win another Worlds, of course, but it also brings a certain calm.

Van Aert was in the form of his life in Leuven, operating at the ‘alien’ level of Pogačar and Van der Poel. Since then, Van Aert had dropped off that exalted level, but he has enjoyed a renaissance in 2026.

Victory at Paris-Roubaix lifted a weighty burden by nixing the idea that Van Aert was somehow incapable of winning the biggest races, like Van der Poel and Pogačar routinely do. And as well as being liberated mentally, Van Aert looks stronger physically than for some time. At the Vuelta, he did as he pleased in the service of Matthew Brennan and in pursuit of the green jersey.

The level of the Vuelta is not comparable with the opposition he will face in Montréal, but Van Aert doesn’t need to be the strongest to be world champion. He just needs to find himself in a winning position and then finish it off. The overthinking that marked his defeats from 2023 to 2025 has given way to confident, quick decision-making. A useful trait in the finale of the Worlds.

With Van Aert and Evenepoel, Belgium have all the pieces needed to reclaim the rainbow jersey. But putting the puzzle together is never as straightforward as it seems.