Wout van Aert looks beyond Roubaix to world title dream and Tour yellow

For a few days, perhaps, Wout van Aert could let Paris-Roubaix be enough.

He had won the race that had hovered over his spring for years. He had crossed the line in the velodrome, lived through the noise, the emotion, the confusion, the search for his wife Sarah, the sleepless night that followed. Then came a holiday, unusually well timed, almost absurdly perfect for a rider who usually wins only to start thinking about the next race before the champagne has dried.

But the stillness did not last. After a week away from the bike, Van Aert began to feel the routine calling him back.

“You think, at first, that you can relax,” he told Domestique among other reporters at Service Koers, where he was honoured for his Paris-Roubaix victory. “But after a week of doing nothing, you notice that you don’t only do it for the victories. You also enjoy the whole process.”

It was a revealing answer from a rider still processing the biggest road win of his career. Roubaix has changed the tone around him, but not the mechanism inside him.

Paris-Roubaix may have removed one long-standing question from Van Aert’s career, but it has not emptied his list of ambitions. If anything, the conversation now moves naturally to the one jersey still missing from his road career.

“I dream of winning a world title one day,” he said. “To wear that jersey again. I have a few at home, and I was able to race in them for a few years, but that is a long time ago. To achieve that again would be fantastic.”

For Van Aert, the rainbow jersey remains one of the clearest ambitions still out there. He has worn those colours before in cyclocross, where they became part of his identity, but on the road the world title is still missing.

He also knows how narrow the window may be. The coming World Championships do not look straightforward for a rider of his profile.

“It will be extremely difficult,” he admitted. “Especially with the courses that are coming in the next years.”

Glasgow in 2023, where he finished second behind Mathieu van der Poel, may have been one of his last obvious chances, he suggested. The routes ahead look increasingly difficult for a rider of his profile, with serious climbing expected in Montréal in 2026 and Haute-Savoie in 2027, followed by a course in Abu Dhabi in 2028 that may prove too straightforward to create the kind of race he needs.

And then there is Tadej Pogačar.

“If Pogačar is in his best form, he is always very, very difficult to beat,” Van Aert said. “This is another course, with a lot of climbing. But that doesn’t mean I’m not very motivated.”

Before the season turns to the Tour de France, there was still Roubaix to return to. The race has changed the way Van Aert’s career will be remembered. Asked about the level that carried him through the Classics, he did not reach for a grand explanation.

“In Roubaix it also just went my way,” he said. “Mathieu having bad luck determines a big part of the race. I had relatively little bad luck, or at least not at the worst moments.”

The 31-year-old Belgian has spent years close to the biggest Classics, often near enough to win and near enough to face the questions when he did not. This spring, he felt just a little better.

“These are half percentages, maybe,” he said.

At Roubaix, enough of those half percentages finally fell his way. In the velodrome, he remembers focusing on one thing: entering the track in second position. Once that was done, the finish seemed to slow down.

“I wasn’t really nervous anymore,” he said. “Everything seemed calm. Almost slow.”

The first real chaos came after the line. Van Aert was pulled from one obligation to the next, and only then realised that his wife Sarah was not where he had expected her to be. The images of him asking where she was quickly became part of the post-race folklore, but in the moment he was genuinely worried.

“You think, surely nothing has happened with the children?” he said. “Luckily that moment didn’t last long.”

Since then, he has discovered how widely the victory was felt. People have stopped him to tell their own Roubaix stories: where they watched the sprint, who they were with, how they pulled over in the car or followed it on holiday. The win became a shared memory, not only a personal one.

Van der Poel’s congratulations also stayed with him. In the crowd around the winner, the Dutchman still made his way over.

“For him to make the effort to come there and congratulate me, that gave me a lot of pleasure and a lot of respect for him,” Van Aert said.

The word “obsession” has followed Van Aert through his pursuit of Roubaix, though he was keen to point out that it never came from him.

“I have always read that word, but I never said it myself,” he said, laughing.

Roubaix was never some irrational fixation, he suggested. It was simply the race he had been good enough to win and close enough to keep chasing. For a rider of his calibre, saying so out loud was hardly unreasonable.

“If I wasn’t allowed to say I wanted to win Roubaix, then maybe only three or four others had the right to have that goal,” he said.

The victory has given him the moment he had spent years working towards, but Van Aert seemed just as interested in the years themselves. He spoke often at Service Koers about the need to take satisfaction from the work, rather than only from the release that comes after the line.

“If you only do it for those five minutes after the finish, when you go through the roof emotionally, then the years become very long,” he said. “You have to enjoy the road towards it as well.”

For all the emotion around Roubaix, Van Aert’s season is already moving on. The Tour de France is the next fixed point in his calendar, and his ambitions there are unusually specific.

The opening weekend has his attention.

“I already have my mind set on the opening weekend,” he said. “I don’t think there will be a huge number of chances for me on this route, but in the first weekend, I think there will be.”

The team time trial is central to that plan. Visma | Lease a Bike have been working towards it for months, and Van Aert hopes to be part of the line-up. A strong performance there could also open a personal opportunity.

“We want to win the team time trial,” he said. “That is a very big goal for us as a team. And if we do that well, there is also a chance for me to maybe wear the yellow jersey.”

Paul Seixas’ participation had only been confirmed earlier that day, news that had not yet reached Van Aert. Still, it did not come as a surprise. Van Aert said he had already expected the young Frenchman to start, and believes Seixas can have an impact at his debut.

“If he continues to confirm his level, he will simply belong with the big guys,” Van Aert said. “There is a chance it becomes less Tadej [Pogačar] against Jonas [Vingegaard], and more a battle between three men, or even more.”

Van Aert was careful not to overstate it. It will be Seixas’ first Grand Tour, and plenty can happen over three weeks according to the Belgian. But the respect was clear.

“What he is doing at such a young age really surprises me,” Van Aert said. “We definitely shouldn’t underestimate him. He has the legs to be involved.”

For Van Aert, the Tour begins with narrower concerns: a team time trial to win, an opening weekend to seize, and perhaps another spell in yellow.