Other than perhaps Remco Evenepoel, few riders get more attention – or more criticism – in the Belgian media than Wout van Aert.
Before the E3 Saxo Classic, Het Nieuwsblad's headline declared that "failure is not an option" for the Visma-Lease a Bike rider in these Classics. After he finished outside the top 10, the papers speculated how bad of a sign this was for the Tour of Flanders, and criticised his decision to skip Gent-Wevelgem on Sunday.
Van Aert is back racing on Wednesday at Dwars door Vlaanderen, and will again have the eyes of the media on him. Still, his sports director Arthur Van Dongen dismissed the criticism from the Flanders-focused Belgian press, with a long plan of important goals ahead of the 30-year-old.
"The press is now saying he has to start in Gent-Wevelgem, but they are only looking to Flanders," Van Dongen told Cyclingnews on Tuesday afternoon.
"In Belgium, the press [are critical] when after one or two races when he's not getting the results they expect, but that's up to them. It's like when they say he has to do Gent-Wevelgem - no, we're working on the long term, and that's more important. Roubaix is also important, Brabantse Pijl and Amstel are also important.
"He also has the Giro on his programme, the Tour de France on his programme. It's easy to say on the short term, but the season is longer than only until Sunday."
Despite the barrage of criticism Van Aert has attracted across written and social media – a Strava comment suggesting he put his family second until he's 35 sums up how much stick he gets – Van Dongen said his spirits weren't dampened.
"His mood is good," he said. "In the last days he goes quite good. He was at home. Most of the team stays in the team hotel in Deerlijk, but Wout was at home. He arrived back at the hotel this morning, and did some good proper training."
After E3's underwhelming result, the team pointed to poor positioning in the key moments as a problem and explanation for what went wrong but were honest about the fact there's not a lot to be done to fix that quickly.
"We can't bring in different people, because we have no options," Van Dongen said. "As well as Olav Kooij [who broke his collarbone during Gent-Wevelgem], we miss Christophe Laporte, Loe van Belle is sick - we have no option to bring in other people. So we coach them, riding as much as possible together. His positioning was much better last week compared to the first races in Omloop and Kuurne."
What's more, the team are trying to be realistic about two things that are hindering Van Aert's Classics so far: the impact of a disrupted winter because of his crash in the Vuelta a España, and the imperious strength of his rivals.
"For the moment the crashes don't affect him anymore. But he started later with his preparation, and his level when he started his preparation was lower because of a lot of crashes compared to the last years, so it takes longer to build up," Van Dongen said.
"Also [in E3] he missed a bit still in his first race after almost one month of training, he missed some explosiveness. But still, in the last hour, he attacked on the Kwaremont, most of which was never on television, but he attacked on the Kwaremont and still kept fighting and was caught back in the last kilometre in Harelbeke."
Not so long ago, Visma-Lease a Bike were a powerful force in this period of racing, but the current dominance of riders like Mathieu van der Poel and Tadej Pogačar – who have had faultless run-ins to this block, in comparison to Wout van Aert – makes replicating that difficult.
"One of our main goals is to do an excellent Flanders and Roubaix, but at the moment there are two riders, Van der Poel and Pogačar, they have such a high, exceptional level," Van Dongen said. "So we must all be realistic. But also the nice part of cycling, is that all is possible."
On Wednesday, Van Aert won't have to worry about Van der Poel and Pogačar and has perhaps one of his best chances so far to take a result and quiet the critics.
"What we expect tomorrow is that we have a strong line-up," Van Dongen said. "Unfortunately not with Olav Kooij, he's out, he was normally here on the programme. But we think we have a good team and Wout can do a good race tomorrow – not only Wout but the whole team. We're looking forward to tomorrow."
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