Less than a week after Wout van Aert kicked off his 2024 road campaign by leading out Visma-Lease A Bike fastman Olav Kooij to triumph in the Clásica de Almería, at the Volta ao Algarve on Friday it was the Belgian’s turn to blast to a sprint win.
While Kooij’ victory was the outcome of a typical mass dash for the line of some 70 riders, Van Aert’s first win of his season was much more opportunistic, coming after the peloton shattered in the final kilometre.
Finding himself in a group of around a dozen riders and with only a short but steady slight uphill gradient to the finish, Van Aert said afterwards that he had only taken a “last-minute decision, but a great one” to go for the win in the coastal town of Tavira.
“My goal was to stay out of trouble in these stages but I think that the approach to the sprint was way easier and safer than the first stage,” Van Aert said afterwards.
“We were in the front with the team and it was our goal to stay in a safe position and then I thought, why not?”
Still only 22 seconds down on race leader Dani Martínez (Bora-Hansgrohe), Van Aert played down the idea he could go for the victory in Saturday’s time trial.
But regardless of this weekend’s results, after his bad luck in the Clásica Jaén on Monday, where a puncture left him badly stranded in the sterrato and the last rider to complete the race, four days later in the Algarve the contrast in his fortunes could not have been more different.
“A performance like yesterday was maybe more important for my confidence and to test my legs but I’m a bike rider and I want to win races. It’s really nice to start the season with a win,” Van Aert said about his performance on the Alto do Fóia, where he was 16th.
The final battle for the line, Van Aert said, was a tricky one with the slight uphill and a headwind.
“It was important to come from the back, I believe, and I managed to have a good position in the final corner. Then I could overtake the guys in front of me at the right moment.”
As a first-time participant in the Volta ao Algarve this year, Van Aert’s victory in the Portuguese stage race is the earliest of his career, the previous first win of his road season being Het Nieuwsblad in 2022, which happened on February 26.
The Algarve victory was a welcome sign that he has hit the ground running then, and also some further confirmation that after an off-season where he deliberately did far less cyclocross than other years, Van Aert has not lost any condition as a result.
However, if Van Aert has switched paths significantly in terms of his training approach over the winter, he played down the idea that he might now have a go at the time trial on Saturday as well, or even fight for the overall in Algarve against Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep).
“It’s not possible, especially with tomorrow, I expect to lose some time,” Van Aert said. “I’ve not touched my time trial bike in the winter so that’s definitely not a good preparation for it.
“Guys like Remco are hard to beat, so I’ll just try my very best and hopefully, we have a few guys in a good position at the end of tomorrow. Then we can play our cards on Sunday.”
