Dressed in a red skinsuit, the leader of the race, the man with all the pressure on him and all the expectation to succeed, Wout van Aert, at the third time of asking, is a Vuelta a España stage winner. It only took him 48 hours longer than he’d hoped.
And with it, the Belgian finally ends his win drought that had stretched to 31 consecutive race days, the longest dry spell he’s had since he went the same number of race days without tasting victory between the summers of 2017 and 2018, years when he wasn’t even competing at WorldTour level and his career was mostly revolving around cyclocross. The noise around his prolificacy can quieten down, at least temporarily.
The Visma-Lease a Bike superstar was close on Saturday’s opening stage time trial, losing by just 2.8 seconds, and he went too early on Sunday, being pipped to the line by Kaden Groves of Alpecin-Deceuninck, but on the race’s final day in Portugal he was determined he was not going to be denied.
With the breakaway of Spanish second-tier riders hoovered up long before the finishing town of Castelo Branco came into view, Van Aert had time to decide his strategy for the bunch sprint: would he be patient and surf the wheels of Groves’s much stronger and purpose-built leadout, or would he, once again, be the first one to start his sprint? Predictably, he opted for the latter, and this time it was enough.
As a result, he strengthens his lead in the red jersey to 13 seconds from Brandon McNulty (the UAE Team Emirates rider will probably retake the lead from Van Aert after stage four’s vicious summit finish) and he also now leads the points classification from Groves.
Between now and the race’s finale in Madrid, there are only two more big bunch sprints like the past two days for Van Aert, Groves and the other paucity of sprinters competing. But for Van Aert, a rider so adept at not just getting over hills and puertos but taming them with the grace and comfort of a mountain weenie, there are at the very least another three more stages where he’ll be the marked man.
And that’s how the soon-to-be 30-year-old likes it. He likes being the rider with the favourite tag. He likes coming good on expectation. He likes rewarding betters with a few extra coins in their app’s virtual piggy bank after they tipped him at barely-worth-it short odds. All this finishing second, third, sometimes not even being in the picture, is not what Wout van Aert is about. Winning, and winning with style, flapping his arms like a bird as he did in Calais 2022 and now Castelo Branco in 2024, is who he is.
Van Aert has never lacked self-belief or confidence in his ability, but going such a long stretch without success naturally feeds negative thoughts into one’s mind. Now he has settled those doubts, the Vuelta peloton should watch out. The leader’s jersey, he states, gives him wings, and now he could be set to fly away from the rest of the field.
