With his right shoulder broken, several broken ribs and, as we learned on Thursday, his sternum also in pieces, Wout Van Aert left the crusher of À Travers la Flanders more damaged than his back dermabrasion led him to fear . You wouldn’t bet Flunch that he slept well, gripped by pain and haunted by the consequences of this new fall.
But all of Belgium woke up shocked when they discovered at breakfast the medical assessment of their favorite, also that of Jasper Stuyven and even Arnaud De Lie, absent during the semi-classic but who is suffering from Lyme disease, according to his Lotto-Dstny team. In the clinic in Herentals, his hometown, the Visma-Lease a bike rider was operated on by Toon Claes, the son of Eddy Merckx’s doctor, who had work since after “WVA”, his compatriot from Lidl -Trek came to take his place in the block to repair his shoulder, too.
In this descent before the Kanarieberg, the nation thus lost its two main chances on the Monuments to come, the Tour of Flanders, Sunday, and Paris-Roubaix on April 7, which no Belgian has won since Philippe Gilbert, in 2017 for the Round, in 2019 for the Hell of the North. Van Aert had made it his main objectives for the season to the point of completely modifying his preparation, skipping part of the cyclo-cross season (including the World Championships) and declining the Tour de France in favor of the Giro, where it is now uncertain.
If the Campinois had decided to think about himself and put every chance of realizing his dream of being crowned in Oudenaarde or on the Roubais velodrome, Jasper Stuyven (31 years old) was riding his current form and he had a good head outsider and profiteer if Mathieu Van der Poel and Van Aert had numbed themselves on the cobbles.
The press stunned
On his social networks, the eighth in Milan-San Remo and second in the E3 Saxo Classic spoke of his dismay: “Goodbye Tour of Flanders, goodbye Paris-Roubaix. All the sacrifices we made, the level we reached. Hell happened ten days early. » But the national press especially mourned the vice-world champion and his iconicity was reflected on most of the front pages by the same photo of his planed back.
The title of the Dutch-speaking daily Het Nieuwsblad (“The Sorrow of Flanders”) recalled the groans heard on television while Le Soir, a French-speaking daily, mentioned, a few days before Easter, “The Stations of the Cross of Wout Van Aert” when “ Wout le maudit”, in The Last Hour, spoke of his bad luck on the Monuments of the North which refuse him.
Beyond the border, the Dutch media were also moved that the duel with Mathieu Van der Poel did not take place: “Le Ronde was beheaded. The curse hanging over Wout’s dream race continues. Flanders cries. » If the flags were not at half-mast, the hangover was not far away, like Stéphane, owner of the Bistro des Anges in Mouscron. Crossed at the foot of the Visma bus at the finish of the classic, he said: “It’s a disaster. »
