'I’m still one of the best bike riders in the world and there will be moments where I can show it' – Wout van Aert aims for Monument glory despite ankle setback

You could hear Wout van Aert coming before you saw him at Visma-Lease a Bike’s team presentation on Tuesday afternoon. He clomped around in a grey protective boot, resting his fractured right ankle on a cushion during the ceremony.

Here we go again, he must have thought after his 2 January crash in Zilvermeercross. It was the latest setback in a misfortune-strewn two years, following a fractured collarbone, rib and sternum at the 2024 Dwars door Vlaanderen and a 2024 Vuelta knee injury which still bears a gruesome scar.

Having been ready and raring to go for the forthcoming season, the shoe is literally on the other foot for Van Aert. It would be understandable for him to be frustrated.

“Sometimes you get really tired of it and it’s also okay to be done with it for a few days,” Van Aert told the media in a round-table chat on Tuesday in La Nucia, Spain. “But there’s still a lot to win and there’s also even moments, just a few weeks [ago], riding between amazing crowds and meeting a lot of your fans: it still motivates you. It’s more natural to look ahead of me and what’s still possible than to get down.”

While Van Aert remarked that he was “not as consistent as he wanted” in 2025, he has had thrills to go with the spills. Last year, he showed his quality and sense of occasion with a barnstorming ride to Giro d’Italia stage victory in Siena and success through the Montmartre fever pitch in the Tour de France's swan song.

“Those wins really helped me to believe, even when not everything is going well. For example, now I’m still one of the best bike riders in the world and there will be moments where I can show it,” he said.

Van Aert’s race against time 

Although the ankle fracture is locked with a screw, Van Aert can ride his bike. However, he cannot build intensity in training until he is pain-free. It leaves him in a race against time to be fully fit and on-form for a busy spring calendar, culminating in the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix. His debut is expected to be at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad on February 28. 

“I’m not fully confident [the ankle won’t be a problem], of course not,” he said. “It’s a complicated injury, a fracture and also ripped-off ligaments. If I was a runner or anything else, I would be out for months. Hopefully as a cyclist, it will still be good enough.”

Calling the injury blow that forced him to curtail his cyclo-cross season “mentally quite significant”, Van Aert was comforted by how quickly he could get back on the bike without losing fitness. The 31-year-old went for a gentle road ride on Monday, a mere ten days after his crash.

2026 brings his eye-catching return to Strade Bianche and Milan-San Remo for the first time in five and three years, respectively. “These are really beautiful races that I don’t want to miss for the rest of my career,” the 2020 winner of ‘La Primavera’ said. “Always in my head, even the moment when I was choosing to do differently, I knew it would raise my inspiration again.”

A return to the spring’s Monuments will also bring him head-to-head again with his long-time sparring partner, Mathieu van der Poel. “There’s still a rivalry between us, but the rivalry has always been bigger for you guys, for the outside than for us, for the outside,” Van Aert said, adding moments later: “It’s still there but of course Mathieu’s palmarès is a bit bigger than mine.”

He has won three successive editions of Paris-Roubaix. The race still casts a magic spell on Van Aert, even if he has suffered misfortune there, perhaps no more so than a heartbreaking puncture on the Carrefour de l’Arbre sector in 2023, which saw his Dutch adversary ride away to his first victory there. 

“It’s probably the only race where you wake up the next day feeling completely broken and get up on Tuesday still feeling the same,” Van Aert says. “There’s so much impact on your body going over these cobbles. The last hour of this race is more like survival than a real race. So much can happen, bad luck and stuff like that, it’s a race where you really have your head full. Arguably, it’s the best race in the calendar.”

A Swiss army knife of a rider, comfortable on cobbles and hors catégorie climbs, Van Aert is not short of goals. The Tour de France’s opening 19.7 km team time trial around Barcelona is another big objective for the Belgian and the squad. “In my head, I’m also dreaming of wearing yellow,” he says.

He is also set to go line up at August’s Vuelta a España as part of a stage-hunting Visma-Lease a Bike line-up, with British super-talent Matthew Brennan expected to make his grand tour debut alongside him. 

Van Aert had kind words for the 20-year-old super-talent while discussing how they will divide their ambitions: “Matthew is for sure faster in the other completely flat sprints. Even when the stage is hard, the sprint is probably more suitable for him. And there is the fact it will be his first grand tour so nobody knows how he will go after ten days. So we should not put pressure on him and let him experience it.”

“The most important thing is we go really well together and we understand each other. I’m even proud that he’s showing that he learns from me, that’s pretty cool.”