Just when things were looking good for Belgium’s most unlucky bike racer, Wout van Aert is facing more heartache.
Van Aert revealed Wednesday a viral infection torpedoed his Giro d’Italia training program and is threatening his pink jersey ambition.
“Pink has become more of a dream than reality. Unfortunately, I got sick last week,” Van Aert told Sporza.
“I didn’t have the ideal preparation. I haven’t been able to do any good training after the Amstel Gold Race except for Tuesday,” Van Aert said Wednesday during a pre-Giro press meet.
“I had to constantly adjust my schedule. The infection kept dragging on.”
Van Aert and his Visma-Lease a Bike trainers had circled Friday’s short, explosive opening stage of the Giro d’Italia since the winter.
The Albanian grande partenza offered WVA the opportunity to complete the “slam” of grand tour stage wins and fill out a wardrobe that already includes the Tour’s maillot jaune and Vuelta’s maillot rojo.
Who will complete his trilogy of stage-wins in Giro d’Italia 2025?
✅ participating:
van Aert, Poels, Yates A., Bardet, Clarke, Majka❌not racing:
Mollema, Lutsenko, Philipsen, Vingegaard, Barguil, Costa, Jakobsen, Kuss, Lampaert, Woods— Cycling Statistics (@StatsOnCycling) May 8, 2025
Two weeks of torpedoed training – he’s been suffering since he narrowly missed the podium in the Limburg on April 20 – have sunk Van Aert’s hopes of hanging with Mads Pedersen, Tom Pidcock, and the puncheurs on Friday.
“We had hoped to increase the training in the past few days, but that didn’t work. It was trying, resting, starting again,” Van Aert said from Albania. “There was no structure.
“I’m in the dark,” Van Aert said of his form. “The intention was to be at my best from the first day. I think that is much less likely now.
“I hope my body responds well to the recon rides. I will try on Friday, but we will see.”
‘A healthy Wout would have competed for pink’
You gotta feel for Van Aert.
The 30-year-old suffered two sickening crashes and long layoffs in 2024.
The first of those thwarted his hopes in the cobblestone monuments and put his Giro d’Italia debut on ice.
Yet a highly scrutinized classics campaign loaded with near-misses this spring suggested Van Aert could be poised for something special at his long-awaited corsa rosa.
Only this week, Visma-Lease a Bike was bigging up its Belgian talisman and his chances at the stage 1 prosecco and a coveted pink tunic.
The flat 14km time trial on tap for stage 2 offered Van Aert an alternative route into pink.
“Of course, it’s true that a normal, healthy Wout would have competed for the pink jersey in the first few days,” Visma-Lease a Bike sport director Marc Reef told Het Nieuwsblad.
“In the most optimistic scenario, he might even be able to hold on to that jersey for a few days,” Reef said Wednesday.
“We were really keen on that.”
Van Aert holding hope for a return to health
But the Giro d’Italia ain’t over for Van Aert.
Sport director Reef told HNB that Van Aert has no plans to abandon midway through the corsa rosa to ensure recovery for the Tour de France and his superdomestique role for Jonas Vingegaard.
A three-week Giro loaded with opportunities means Van Aert is still in for a win. He’s also dialed in for leadout duty for Visma-Lease a Bike co-leader and alpha sprinter Olav Kooij.
“I hope to ride a nice Giro, of course,” Van Aert said Wednesday.
“If I get better from the first few days, I will quickly be able to pick up all the efforts from before.”