'A beautiful sport with a dark edge' - Wout van Aert suffers the cruellest blow

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Wout Van Aert alone against his destiny (Image credit: Getty Images)

The impact of the crash left an immediate mark on Wout van Aert, his jersey torn to shreds, his back aflame with road rash and the multiple fractures causing huge pain. The magnitude of the moment took a beat or two longer to register.

When it did, Van Aert's body began to convulse in sobs. He didn't need an x-ray to tell him what his broken heart already knew. His 2024 Classics campaign had ended, not in victory on the Roubaix velodrome, but here, on a lonesome road outside Ronse, 67km from the finish of Dwars door Vlaanderen.

On television, Van Aert's guttural howl could be heard even above the confused, excited babble of the commentary team, and it was hard to tell if the anguish was for the pain of his injuries or the death of a dream. It was hard, too, not to think of Sean Kelly and a similar moment of pathos at a critical moment in his career.

Comparisons with Kelly have accompanied Van Aert on some of his most sparkling outings, those afternoons when nothing seemed beyond the range of the most dextrous rider in the peloton. Perhaps it was only logical that there would be a parallel between them on Van Aert's saddest day too.

The 1987 Tour de France was something of a last dance for Kelly as a yellow jersey contender. With Bernard Hinault retired and Greg LeMond absent, the Irishman set out from Berlin as the closest thing to a favourite for one of the most open Tours in living memory. His challenge ended not far outside Brive on stage 12, when he fractured his collarbone in a low-speed crash. He battled on for an hour before yielding to the inevitable and climbing off.

When Kas directeur sportif Christian Rumeau draped a long-sleeved jersey across Kelly's shoulders and led him towards the team car, he could contain himself no longer. The hardest man in cycling wept openly and unashamedly, and the whole Tour caravan seemed to mourn with him.

The throbbing of a broken collarbone was something Kelly could handle, he'd experienced it all before. The pain of pulling the plug was something else, an agony beyond even his famous stoicism.

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So it was for Van Aert on Wednesday. 

After he dragged himself to the side of the road, he was hit by the realisation that his carefully tailored approach to the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix had been for nothing. His whole season has suddenly been derailed. He is unlikely to recover in time for the Giro d'Italia, forcing him to rethink his preparations for the Paris Olympics.

"We have never seen Wout van Aert cry after a setback. Never! This time, yes," Het Nieuwsblad noted on Thursday morning. 

"Van Aert's tears were tears of pain and disappointment. The realisation that all the sacrifices of the past few months have been in vain hit Van Aert like a hammer blow."

Van Aert had raced a reduced cyclocross programme over the winter as part of his Ronde mission. He had spent weeks cooped up at altitude in the Parador Hotel in Tenerife. He had skipped Strade Bianche and Milan-San Remo. For months, everything in his life had existed as a function of March 31. 

And now it was gone.

A dark edge

Although Van Aert's Visma-Lease A Bike teammate Matteo Jorgenson went on to win Dwars door Vlaanderen, it was a muted kind of celebration at the finish in Waregem. 

Tiesj Benoot placed fourth on the day, but when he arrived in the mixed zone, his thoughts were for his inadvertent part in Van Aert's crash rather than his key role in Jorgenson's victory.

"Wout shouted at me to accelerate, which I did," Benoot said of that mass crash on the rapid approach to the Kanarieberg. "But I think he touched my back wheel when I stood up to accelerate. I feel really shit about it, actually."

Benoot's part in the incident was a cruel irony. He had done more than most to prepare Van Aert for his planned prize fight with Mathieu van der Poel at the Ronde and Roubaix, joining his friend on that three-week camp in Tenerife, sparring with him on those endless rides amid the red scree of Mount Teide.

The mood was sombre at the Visma-Lease A Bike team bus, where most reporters had congregated after the race. Plans to check in with various Ronde contenders in the mixed zone were put on hold. Hold the front page: Van Aert's status was the story that would dominate the news cycle in Flanders. 

At that very moment, Van Aert was in hospital undergoing assessment, but the diagnosis already seemed self-evident. Directeur sportif Grisha Niermann tried to strike an upbeat note, even if he knew he was fighting a losing battle. 

"In any case we will start on Sunday with seven strong riders," he said, surely already aware they would be lining out without their strongest.

At various stations around the Visma-Lease A Bike bus, members of the management team were being waylaid by television crews and reporters. Nobody yet had precise information about Van Aert's injuries, but everybody already sensed what the outcome of those x-rays would be. That howl on the roadside had said it all, long before the announcement dropped detailing Van Aert's broken collarbone and ribs, and confirming his absence from the Ronde, Paris-Roubaix and Amstel Gold Race.

Merijn Zeeman couldn't help but dwell on the duality of the occasion when he spoke. 

"One moment, you see the terrible crash of Wout and those other boys, the next moment a rider crosses the finish line with his hands in the air," he said. "Cycling is a beautiful sport with a dark edge."

Doomed