Belgian Wout van Aert abandoned the Across Flanders race in tears, after a very violent fall along with several other favorites, on Wednesday, four days before the Tour of Flanders. The leader of the Visma-Lease a bike team went to the ground 67 km from the finish in a right turn taken at full speed. He stood up with difficulty, screaming in pain and disappointment, his shirt torn and his back completely torn, before being evacuated by ambulance to be taken to the hospital.
Involved in the same fall, his compatriot Jasper Stuyven and the Eritrean Biniam Girmay were also on their way to the hospital, according to their respective teams, Lidl-Trek and Intermarché. The Dane Mads Pedersen, winner of Ghent-Wevelgem on Sunday, also fell but was able to restart. All these riders were in a small peloton of favorites chasing behind the breakaway.
This incident is likely to seriously compromise Van Aert’s participation in the Tour of Flanders on Sunday and on April 7 at Paris-Roubaix. The 29-year-old Flemish had made these two cobbled Monuments, which are still missing from his list of achievements, the main objective of his season.
He focused his entire start to the year around these two classics, skipping several races including Milan-Sanremo to prepare at altitude in Tenerife, during a three-week course. Last Friday, he had already fallen, but less heavily, during the E3 Grand Prix won by his great rival Mathieu van der Poel.
The Dutchman did not participate in Across Flanders on Wednesday, to preserve himself for the “Ronde” on Sunday of which he becomes more than ever the overwhelming favorite. For Van Aert, the curse seems to continue on the Flemish classics which were promised to him at the start of his career, but on which he accumulates strokes of bad luck, such as his puncture during the last Paris-Roubaix at a crucial moment of the race.