>>8118 >Teammate Bart Lemmen recounted: “Wout already showed us on the approach to the climb that he didn’t have good legs, let’s leave him behind.”
>And in Tuesday’s purely sprint stage to Lecce? Van Aert was supposed to be the key man for Olav Kooije, the Visma sprinter, in its hectic finale - but he was nowhere near where he should have been in the flying pack.
>“I think Wout is still suffering from the illness,” said Marc Reef, Visma’s sports director. “Otherwise he would have been among the best in Saturday’s time trial and would have fought for the overall lead.”
>Did he push himself too far?
>Dutch cycling analyst Thijs Zoneveld believes that Van Aert’s extreme effort at the end of the first stage may have backfired on him. “In an attempt to eliminate the loss in it and strive for the stage victory, he went far beyond his limits. Since then, he has been riding far below his level and has been downright bad,” he stated in the podcast In De Waaier.
>Another expert, Bobbie Traksel, noted in the Eurosport podcast: “After the first stage, many may have said to themselves: It was all just rumors that Van Aert was sick and that he would be bad at the Giro. But the time trial came - and the time trial doesn't lie. After that, it was clear that he was really sick.”
>Van Aert's hotwife, Sarah De Bie, also spoke to Het Nieuwsblad about the illness he suffered about a week before the Giro.
>“Wout couldn't train much, so he spent more time with his family, which was of course great fun for the children,” she described. “But for Wout it was completely useless. Such a forced rest is not real rest when you have children around you. I don’t have to explain that to other parents.”
05/14/2025 (Wed) 08:33
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