Yellow, green and stage jerseys: these three objectives would be enough for most riders, but not for Wout van Aert, the strong man of Jumbo, also ready to become a princely teammate for his leaders, Primož Roglič and Jonas Vingegaard, rather than to adopt a free role.
“The plan is to play everything for Roglič and me in the stage [des pavés de mercredi]even Wout van Aert will therefore be designated as a team member that day, ”Vingegaard told the Danish specialist podcast on Sunday. Veloropa.
Leader one day, teammate the next: in cycling, this pendulum is nothing new. What is, is to see a runner of the level of “WVA” apply it. “We will continue to try to combine our two objectives,” assured the Belgian on Sunday. “I started well for the green jersey and, in the general classification, we remained out of danger in Denmark. Jonas and Primož look really strong. »
At 27, van Aert is a Flemish work to be contemplated with hindsight. His three second places since the start of the Tour de France are the extension of a statistically staggering season: in 25 days of racing, the Belgian has signed 17 stage or one-day race podiums.
Taking a step back even further, we notice that, from one Tour to another, he has never ranked above second place in the last five stages he has contested: he had won in the Saint-Émilion time trial, then in the sprint on the Champs-Élysées last year.
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His yellow Tour jersey is the third he wears after those of Paris-Nice and then the Critérium du Dauphiné. Which makes him only the fifth man to drape himself in the three golden tunics the same year, after Jacques Anquetil (1963), Eddy Merckx (1971), Joop Zoetemelk (1979) and Bradley Wiggins (2012).
Unlike the other four, it’s hard to imagine him winning the Tour. His ambition, he diverts it to others. And the documentary Plan Bfrom the Dutch channel NOS, immersed in Jumbo during the 2021 Tour, revealed how the charismatic leader was neither Roglič nor Vingegaard, but him.
Declination of the Irishman Sean Kelly, the star of the classics of the 1980s, but without a quite comparable prize list yet, the Belgian is ready to put himself at the service of his climbers. Although he proved last year that he was capable of winning on all terrains during the same Tour de France, winning the Mont Ventoux stage, a time trial and the traditional Champs-Élysées sprint.
WVA looks more than capable of winning all five landmarks, the greatest classics. What only three men, all Belgians, have achieved: Riik van Looy, Eddy Merckx and Roger de Vlaeminck, the last, in 1974. The fact remains that even the illustrious Sean Kelly stumbled three times in second place in the Tour of Flanders, only piece missing from his collection. For now, van Aert only counts Milan-Sanremo. But if his engine and his heart make one of his leaders triumph in Paris, he will also count this coronation. Vicarious.