Wout van Aert abandons in Mol after a crash in snow, faces medical assessment

The incident came with two laps to go, on a slippery corner that had already caught out riders earlier in the race. Van der Poel lost traction first and had to make a small correction to stay upright. Van Aert, riding right behind him at speed, appeared to tense up in reaction and then went down, landing hard on his right ankle and knee.

There was visible blood from Van Aert’s knee, and although he remounted and tried to continue, he was clearly struggling whenever he had to put weight through the injured leg. When he reached the pit area, he stopped and abandoned.

Van der Poel and Van Aert were locked in a battle for the victory, but the incident put an end to the potential showdown for the win in a snowy Mol.

After the race, Team Visma | Lease a Bike sports director Jan Boven described the situation in blunt terms. “He could not finish the race because he has a lot of pain in his ankle,” Boven told reporters in quotes collected by Wielerflits. “There are two very small abrasions on his knee. That is already not a knee that looks super good. But the ankle is the most painful.”

The ankle, Boven added, had already swollen significantly and will now need closer inspection. “The ankle is now so swollen that they have to go to the hospital to see what we can examine at this moment. For now we have to wait. Only then can we draw conclusions. The cross in Zonhoven is ultimately in two days. That is very short notice. We cannot give 100% certainty now whether he can start there.”

Boven also pointed to how quickly the conditions changed in Mol. “In the end they were very different circumstances. You do the course inspection in sunshine and dry, then you have to be able to switch to endure these weather conditions in the race.”

He stressed that Van der Poel’s earlier slide was not the direct cause of Van Aert’s fall, but it did play a role in the chain of events. 

“In the end Mathieu already slid away just before Wout, but that was not the cause of the fall itself. What did happen is that Wout got a bit of a fright because Mathieu had to make a small correction. And Wout reacted with a small startled reaction. He has the idea that he made a small mistake there. It was slippery there anyway, because the lap before Felipe Orts had also crashed in that corner.”

Despite the abrupt ending, Boven said the duel itself offered encouragement. “Purely physically, Van Aert rode his best cross of the winter. The duel gave hope, without a doubt. In Loenhout we were already close, but Wout had two punctures there, so we never got to see that duel. But today, especially when Wout came back to the front in the race, he seemed at ease. It is a shame we could not see the result,” Boven concluded.