Wout van Aert: Cyclo-cross and time trials are both full gas start to finish

12 June 2019 07:35
Wout van Aert's two podium finishes on the opening three stages of the Critérium du Dauphiné for Jumbo-Visma were bettered on Wednesday with the Belgian's first WorldTour stage victory on the stage 4 time trial, putting 31 seconds into Tejay van Garderen (EF Education First) and 47 seconds into former time trial world champion Tom Dumoulin (Team Sunweb). The victory is the icing on the cake for the three-time cycle-cross world champion in his debut stage race for a WorldTour team, where a third-place finish on stage 1 and a second place finish on stage 3 saw van Aert in both the green sprinter's jersey and the white best young rider's jersey at the halfway point of the race. Van Aert has previously won a prologue time trial at the Baloise Belgium Tour in 2016, beating another former time trial world champion in Tony Martin. At only six kilometres in length, the prologue was a very different beast to today's 26.1-kilometre time trial, which featured a climb with around 200 metres of ascent at the midway point of the course.ADVERTISEMENT "I think it was a prologue that I won in Belgium a few years ago but this is a longer TT and at WorldTour level so of course, it's a bigger result," van Aert said in the stage winner's press conference in Roanne. "Obviously it's a surprise because I don't have too much WorldTour level time trials before and actually, we trained quite a bit over the last few weeks and worked on my position but not longer than a month so I didn't think that would be enough to compete on this level. It worked though, so I'm very happy." Van Aert's stellar week comes off the back of the Jumbo-Visma team announcement that van Aert will also be riding the Tour de France next month. The Belgian's consistent results during the past two Classics campaign have marked him as a serious contender during the spring but whether the performances could be replicated in a serious stage race was an unknown. Cyclo-cross star to time trialling talent You can read more at Cyclingnews.com.readfullarticle

Source: Cycling News