'He's just a normal human being' - In Belgium, Van Aert means more than his results

The cheers started when Wout van Aert emerged from the Visma | Lease a Bike bus on Sunday morning and they followed him in a wave all along the seafront as he rode to the signing-on podium in Middelkerke. “Woutje! Woutje!” went the shout, parents excitedly nudging their children as he freewheeled past.

Not even the passage of Mathieu van der Poel sparked quite the same excitement from the assembled masses, and nobody inspired anything like the level of affection that was heaped upon Van Aert as he reported for duty at Gent-Wevelgem.

A few hours later, Van Aert would set Flemish hearts aflutter still further. On the second ascent of the Kemmelberg, he launched a seated acceleration of the kind not seen in these parts for three years. On the final time up the climb, he was the only man able to follow his old foe Van der Poel.

Their rivalry only fleetingly defined bike racing in these parts, but now, just for a moment, it was as though Tadej Pogačar had never parachuted into the cobbles and hills of Flanders. It was Van Aert against Van der Poel, and nothing else, just like it had been on the cyclocross circuit when they were still only kids.

It wouldn’t last. A determined chase and Van der Poel’s team duties meant the pair were caught beneath the flamme rouge. Instead of sprinting for victory, Van Aert had to settle for 30th, but it hardly mattered to the fans gathered on Wevelgem’s Vanackerestraat. Like in Middelkerke, the cheers followed Van Aert by induction towards the Visma bus.

“I was among the better riders and was able to help shape the race, so I am certainly satisfied with how I was able to race,” Van Aert told reporters when he got there. “It was a nice day.”

That seemed to be the broad consensus across Belgium. A week out from the Tour of Flanders, Van Aert fans were just about daring to dream. One friend reported being intercepted by a colleague as soon as he arrived at work on Monday morning. “He was good, wasn’t he?” the colleague began. No ‘hello,’ no ‘how are you?’ and no need to explain who ‘he’ is.

In Belgium, the love for Van Aert transcends cycling. Only Remco Evenepoel draws as many eyeballs, but while everything the Red Bull man says and does is box office news, the affection is nowhere near as unconditional. 

It’s not entirely clear why, but perhaps Evenepoel’s background in football and his apparent aversion to cobbles are simply not what Flemish fans have traditionally expected of their champions. When Evenepoel loses, there are plenty who take a certain glee in pointing out where it went wrong. When Van Aert loses, there is altogether more compassion.

That was illustrated very clearly at last year’s Dwars door Vlaanderen. After an injury-blighted 2024, Van Aert was a reduced version of himself last spring, the strength of his legs well off the scope of his ambition. It didn’t stop him from trying. With Pogačar and Van der Poel absent, his Visma squad blew the race apart and as Van Aert sped towards the finish in Waregem, he had two teammates in the four-man winning move.

Victory looked inevitable, but nothing was a given for Van Aert now, not after his travails the previous season. He never seemed to get on top of his gear in the sprint, and Neilson Powless gratefully sprinted to the biggest win of his career. A disconsolate Van Aert slumped against a barrier after the finish, consoled by his wife Sarah De Bie. 

In a self-lacerating post-race interview, Van Aert shouldered all the blame for the Visma fiasco, and he would apologise to his teammates that night at the hotel. It’s striking that even now, a year on, the episode remains a sensitive one for Visma. 

Speaking to Domestique about it in Middelkerke, Visma Head of Racing Grischa Niermann is above all at pains to insist that he should take at least as much blame as Van Aert.

“In the end, I’m in the team car, I’m making the calls, and it’s my responsibility, finally,” Niermann says. “I also did the wrong calls, and it’s good that we take a shared responsibility there.”

Niermann’s words echo those of others within the team, including Matteo Jorgenson and Victor Campenaerts. The affection for Van Aert from those keeping vigil outside the team bus seems to be mirrored by those sitting on board it.

“It’s not only within the team, I think he’s also loved in all over the world, and especially in Belgium, of course,” Niermann says. “Why? Because he’s a great guy and he’s a great leader of our team. And I think people love him for all the victories that he has, but also for the defeats and the bad moments he had. And yeah, he’s just a normal human being…”

Van Aert’s vulnerability is a key part of his appeal now, but it’s worth recalling that he was an alien once too. At the turn of the decade, as cycling accelerated to warp speed following the coronavirus lockdown, Van Aert delivered performances that matched and occasionally exceeded those of Van der Poel and Pogačar.

The 2022 Tour de France was probably the apotheosis. Van Aert won three stages and the green jersey. He wore the yellow jersey and then helped Jonas Vingegaard carry it to Paris. He crowned an all-action Tour by dropping Pogačar at Hautacam. It was a dizzying three weeks. Vingegaard won the Tour, but Van Aert was its MVP.

The Classics, however, have proved an unhappier hunting ground. Van Aert has wins at Omloop, Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne, E3 Harelbeke, Gent-Wevelgem, Amstel Gold Race and Strade Bianche on his palmarès, but his Monument count is light. His lone victory was at Milan-Sanremo six years ago. In the meantime, Van der Poel has raced ahead to eight Monuments, while Pogačar’s running tally is eleven.

But there is something drearily reductive about counting Monuments in that way. The 21st century obsession with quantifying everything has its limits. In cycling, as in life, numbers only ever tell a part of the story. Freddy Maertens never won a Monument, and the aberration seems to devalue the very concept of the Monument more than it diminishes Maertens. Peter Sagan ‘only’ won two Monuments, Julian Alaphilippe has just one. 

All three riders left an impression on their eras and those who watched them race. Van Aert is doing the same. He will keep chasing Monument wins – especially at the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix – and the pursuit itself is what is so engaging.

“We know it’s not easy competing against Pogačar and Van der Poel, but absolutely the desire is there to win,” Niermann says. “But he is already a big champion, and he will be remembered, so it doesn’t matter if, at the end of his career, he has one Monument on his palmarès or five or ten.”

When Van Aert crashed and broke his collarbone at Dwars door Vlaanderen two years ago, Het Nieuwsblad suggested that his absence from the following Sunday’s Tour of Flanders meant there would be an asterisk against the winner’s name: “It will forever be the edition that was largely decided four days earlier on the descent to the Kanarieberg.”

In purely practical terms, that patently wasn’t the case. Van der Poel won his third Ronde in emphatic fashion, and it weighs just as heavily in his palmarès as the first two. But in purely emotional terms, Het Nieuwsblad wasn’t wrong. Some of the usual joy was missing that afternoon, with the guest of honour missing from Belgian cycling’s highest feast.

Van Aert’s presence – and his form – is heightening anticipation this time around. While Van Aert was racing Gent-Wevelgem on Sunday, VRT reported that a group of his fans had already staked out their spots on the Paterberg for the Ronde next weekend. “We are four campers. If we arrived later, we wouldn’t have been able to park together,” Christine from Bruges told the broadcaster. “Wout is riding very well. We hope he can be the winner on Sunday.”

The picture didn’t look so cheerful in early January, when Van Aert suffered a broken ankle that cut short his cyclocross campaign, but there have been gradually encouraging signs on the road, most notably when he took third at Milan-Sanremo. That display followed his first Tirreno-Adriatico appearance since 2023, which marked a break with his recent trend of opting for an altitude camp in March.

“In general, it’s good to do different things again once in a while,” Niermann says. “For two or three years now, we had the plan to go on altitude and to do less racing in spring, and especially in March. But now we change it again and I think that it’s good that he already did some races now.”

The races that matter most of all are coming on the first two Sundays of April. Van Aert has finished on the podium at the Ronde just once, back in 2020, while illness and injury forced him to miss two editions since. He has been on the podium of Paris-Roubaix twice, but a puncture on Carrefour de l’Arbre cost him his best chance in 2023.

Like Thibaut Pinot and the Tour de France, the more fervently Van Aert has pursued these prizes, the more callously they have repelled him. And as with Pinot, watching him get up and try again, year after year, has become one of the most compelling stories in all of cycling. In some ways, it doesn’t even matter if he ever gets the win. The glory lies in the attempt.

“These are the races we want to win, but we are not chasing them blindly. It’s not all over if he doesn’t win Flanders or Roubaix,” Niermann says. “I think he will be remembered regardless. But his career is far from over, so there are a lot of chances.”