Wout van Aert gives ankle update ahead of Opening Weekend: 'Full sprinting isn’t possible yet'

Van Aert fractured his ankle four weeks ago in Mol and described the first days back on the bike as a strange mix of progress and pain. “On my first rides I had to pull my foot out of the pedal with my hand, because unclipping hurt a lot,” he said in the Live Slow Ride Fast podcast.

That has eased as the swelling has gone down. “The swelling has reduced a lot and I can almost walk normally again,” Van Aert said. “On the bike I can already accelerate a bit out of corners, so it’s getting more and more normal.”

The biggest limitation, for now, is still at the edge of movement. Van Aert explained that the pedalling motion itself sits comfortably once the foot is fixed in place, but the ankle remains sensitive in the final degrees of flexion. “It’s more that the last degrees of movement in the ankle are still painful,” he said. “And full sprinting, that’s something I can’t do yet.”

Even so, he has already managed a significant workload. “Six hours,” Van Aert said, when asked about his longest training ride since the injury. “I rode six hours in Spain.”

He admitted he still has ground to make up, but the early signs have been encouraging: “To a certain extent I still had a bit of discomfort, but cycling itself, once the foot is fixed, is within my comfort zone.”

The injury will also turn Van Aert into a spectator at this weekend’s Cyclocross World Championships, a race he had hoped to contest and add another chapter to his long running duel with Mathieu van der Poel.

The frustration is obvious, even if he has tried to pivot quickly. “Because of the injury, I’m still behind where I want to be,” he said, adding that he has been focused on turning the page as soon as possible.

On the road, the plan remains the same and unusually broad by his recent standards. Van Aert is due to open his season at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, then return to Strade Bianche and Milan San Remo after a few years as part of the build-up before targeting the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix. In the second half of the year, he is set to ride both the Tour de France and the Vuelta a España, with the latter also linked to his longer term aim of peaking again for the World Championships in Canada.