Wout van Aert: the Most Dominant Athlete You’ve Never Heard Of
It’s July, so we did something different. Read all about Wout van Aert, the Belgian sensation who stole the Tour de France for the second year in a row, even though he didn’t come close to winning it
A Note from the Editor:
Esteemed Gulo Gulo Hockey Reader,
It is July 28th, and we simply cannot even pretend to summon an interest in World Juniors pre-camp. We will find our way to the nearest TV screen once the hockey starts, but, for now, we have nothing to say. We could be the 900th person to weigh in on the Matthew Tkachuk to Florida trade or Ann Arbor and U of M’s own Andrew Copp signing in Detroit, but frankly we’re bored just thinking about it.
We did want to write something though, so we thought we would try something different. This piece has nothing to do with hockey. Instead, it is about a superhuman who just completed the Tour de France. We realize cycling is one of the few sports farther from the American mainstream than hockey, so chances are good you either don’t care about or dislike bike racing. Just give us a shot on this one.
We assure you we will return to all the Michigan hockey coverage you want and need when the time is right, but for now, give this a shot. If you love it, write to us at gulogulohockey@gmail.com. If you hate it, I suppose you could share that too.
Love,
Your Friends at Gulo Gulo
On the twenty-fourth day, Wout rested and drank champagne.
On the first three days he came second. On the fourth day, he soloed to victory in Calais. On the ninth day, he beat everybody across a hilly course that ended in a bunch sprint in Lausanne on the shores of Lake Geneva. On the twenty-first day, Wout attacked at kilometer zero, tore through the Pyrenees, then linked up with his teammate Jonas Vingegaard on the slopes up to the ski town of Hautacam to break two-time defending champion Tadej Pogacar for good and usher Vingegaard to a mountaintop victory. On the twenty-third day, he was nineteen seconds faster than everyone else on a time trial through the south of France. But on the twenty-fourth and final day of the 2022 Tour de France, Wout van Aert—finally—rested.
The Belgian didn’t win the Tour (that honor went to his Danish teammate Vingegaard, thanks in large part to WVA’s yeoman work as a domestique), but he was beyond doubt its best rider.
If you aren’t a cycling fan, that statement might seem contradictory. Perhaps you didn’t even realize bike racing was a team sport, so allow me to elaborate.
The Tour de France is a unique sporting enterprise. To the television viewer, it is a gorgeous jaunt up, down, around and sometimes beyond France (this year’s race actually opened in Copenhagen). To the riders, it is a grueling-to-the-point-of-cruelty series of twenty-one marathons spaced across twenty-four days, ridden this year through record-setting temperatures.
The Tour’s fabled yellow jersey belongs to the rider with the fastest overall time, but the maillot jaune is just the beginning of the competition. For most riders, just to win a single stage of the Tour is enough to make a career. Besides the daily prize of a stage win, there are three other jerseys up for grabs: green for the points competition, red-on-white polka dots go to the king of the mountains, and white for the fastest rider under twenty-five.
In this year’s edition, van Aert finished twenty-second in the general classifications (despite the heavy sacrifices he made to facilitate Vingegaard’s victory), fifth in the KOM, and won the points competition.
The Belgian’s brilliance makes him the ultimate advertisement for his sport and for the Tour; as just one rider, he illustrates the tactics, brutality, and variety of competition that distinguish cycling from any other sport.
There is Wout the sprinter, fast and powerful enough to best the most competitive field in bike racing in a bunch sprint. Then there is Wout the super domestique, churning through the miles at the head of the peloton day after day whether on a flat stage or over the Alps. There is also Wout the time-trial specialist, tapping out mesmerizing power even when separated from his Jumbo-Visma teammates.
If judging on appearance alone, you would classify van Aert as a sprinter. These riders are the peloton’s cheetahs, specializing in producing enormous power and speed over a short burst at the finish line. They don’t fit the spindly image you associate with a bike racer (those are the mountain climbers). Instead, they are, at least by cycling standards, stocky and nasty enough to emerge out of the chaos that is the final 1,000 meters of a flat day of bike racing.
It is sprinters who typically compete for the maillot vert, earning points based on the order at the finish line and at intermediate sprints throughout each stage.
Between 2019 and 2021, the winner of the green jersey averaged exactly 70 points more than his next closest challenger.
In 2022, van Aert bested second-place finisher Jasper Philipsen by 194 points.
Wout’s sprinting prowess was on full display in his Stage 8 victory, across the Swiss border in Lausanne.
At first blush, the ride into Lausanne did not appear favorable for sprinters; its profile (hilly but not so mountainous as to invite competition amongst serious yellow jersey contenders) tends to invite a breakaway.
Instead, van Aert’s Jumbo-Visma squad worked to corral the breakaway and set up a sprint finish, albeit a steep one. The hills were enough to freeze out traditional sprinters like Caleb Ewan or Jasper Philipsen, but Wout still faced competition from Team BikeExchange’s Michael Matthews (an Aussie with four Tour stage wins and the 2017 green jersey to his name).
In the race’s final kilometer, van Aert appeared boxed in. Matthews and Tadej Pogacar (who hoped to extend his overall lead thanks to the time bonuses up for grab for the first three riders across the finish line) each had more teammates in support and a cleaner line to the finish.
Ever unperturbed by adversity, Wout kept patient and when a central lane emerged, the mighty Belgian pounced, outdragging Matthews and Pogacar for what was already his second stage win of the Tour.
Unlike for a sprinter in a foot race, a two-wheeled sprinter’s challenge is as much about finding a path to the finish line (a task that requires sharp elbows and utter fearlessness) as it is putting the power down. Even the fastest rider of the bunch can be foiled by bad positioning or bad luck.
Wout appeared in trouble, only to outwait and then lay waste to his opposition. The three-week race was barely a third done, but Wout was already 115 points up on his closest challenger for the green jersey.
How did the Belgian achieve such dominance? Because van Aert isn’t a sprinter, or rather he isn’t just a sprinter. Instead, he is everything we prize in a modern athlete: hyper-versatile, but willing to channel his unique skillset into a tactical system that suits his team’s needs.
As if his individual success weren’t enough, Wout van Aert proved himself to be the most important lieutenant to Vingegaard’s Tour-winning ride.
A cycling team at a grand tour is made up of eight riders. Perhaps one has ambitions at the race’s general classification; perhaps another is a sprinter, aiming for a stage win or two. The other six are, to varying degrees, domestiques, riders who will work in service of their teammates’ ambitions. Domestiques might help set the pace at the front of the peloton, they might work to reel in a breakaway featuring a threat to their leader’s objectives, or they might just retreat to the team car to pick up water bottles. Even for the strongest contenders, the maillot jaune is impossible without the sacrifice of industrious domestiques.
Never was this on clearer display than in the Tour’s final day in the high mountains: ninety miles through the Pyrenees featuring two massive climbs (the Col d’Aubisque and Col de Spandelles) before a mountaintop finish in the village of Hautacam.
Wout started the stage feeling frisky, attacking at kilometer zero and establishing a breakaway that would last until the slopes leading up to Hautacam.
It was on that decisive climb of the 2022 Tour de France that Wout the Super Domestique was at his best. The race was down to its three best (again, we ought to clarify that best is not synonymous with fastest here) riders: Wout and Vingegaard pitted against Pogacar.
Pogacar had lead the race between Stages 6 and 10 and earned comparisons to cycling’s golden god Eddy “The Cannibal” Merckx thanks to the ruthlessness with which he won the 2020 and 2021 editions of the Tour.
It’s not just that Wout and Vingegaard had to contend with the most accomplished grand tour racer of the last two seasons; it’s that Pogacar was desperate. The Slovenian entered the day trailing Vingegaard by two minutes and eighteen seconds. Pogacar could close some of that gap in the time trial on the penultimate day of the race, but he needed to claw a healthy chunk of it back before the Tour left the mountains.
How did Wout cope with this threat? The same way he always does: hammering out a dizzying rhythm on his pedals. At this aggressive tempo, Pogacar couldn’t summon the strength to mount another attack on Vingegaard.
Just as it looked like van Aert—shoulders rocking back and forth, grimace across his face—might finally give out, the Belgian offered one last push that cracked Pogacar for good. Vingegaard would win the stage, put another minute and four seconds between himself and Pogacar, and all but clinch the maillot jaune.
It’s not that van Aert is robotic atop the bicycle; the cost of his effort in the oppressive French heat appears in his grimace. No sport exposes the suffering it inflicts on its competitors the way cycling does; not even Wout van Aert can escape its inevitability.
The difference with van Aert is that the onset of suffering has no effect on performance. Van Aert stamps out tempo day-after-day, indifferent to heat or hills but eager to pounce on any damned soul who dares test him.
Remember that time trial on the penultimate day of the race we mentioned earlier? I bet you can guess who won it on your first try.
The time trial is known in cycling as “the race of truth;” a rider cannot hide behind the strength of their teammates in this individual competition.
From a viewer’s perspective, this can make time trials a bit boring to watch. There can be drama in comparing the contenders times through the various checkpoints across the course.
In 2021, Pogacar ripped the Tour from van Aert and Vingegaard’s teammate Primoz Roglic in a spectacular time trial, but the drama came more in watching the clock than watching the racing. Without the context of other riders out on the course, it’s difficult to process the speed and power you are witnessing. Unsurprisingly, Wout van Aert is an exception to this rule too.
There is an indifference to Wout, and you can see it in his time trialing. It’s not that Wout doesn’t care, but you get the sense that he would ride the exact same race whether anyone was on the course with him or not. Where most riders appear vulnerable or even daunted when untethered to the comfort of the peloton, Wout just keeps pedaling.
The Truth of the 2022 couldn’t have been plainer after its final time trial: despite what the general classification standings might say, Wout van Aert won the Tour de France.
After his third stage win, Wout did what the Tour’s best rider always does on the
Tour’s last day: he rested and drank champagne.
The run-in to Paris, culminating in eight laps around the Champs-Elysees, is a day of celebration; the agony of three weeks of bike racing is all but over. At the stage’s end, the Tour’s top sprinters race for the honor of winning on the Champs.
A year ago in Paris, Wout won to keep Mark Cavendish (whom Quick-Step inexplicably withheld from the race this year) from passing Merckx’s record for Tour stage wins. For van Aert, it completed a race in which he won another time trial, atop Mont Ventoux (arguably cycling’s most famous climb), and on the Champs (inarguably cycling’s biggest sprint).
Except this year, the Tour’s best sprinter didn’t bother to participate in the final fireworks. His green jersey was safe, and he had nothing left to prove.
This year, on the twenty-fourth day, at long last, Wout rested.