Van Aert continues with the radical change in his preparation and withdraws for almost a month to train at altitude.

The preparation plan of Wout van Aert by his new coach has been confirmed, which we already talked about several weeks ago. The goal of this plan is to turn the Belgian into the king of the cobblestones this spring. As previously announced, the Visma-Lease a Bike rider will not compete in either Strade Bianche or Milan-San Remo, instead focusing on altitude training.

Wout van Aert's path to hell goes through the heights

Conquering Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix is, without a doubt, one of the great musts in Wout van Aert's illustrious career. Races that he has always come close to winning, even coming within centimeters of victory as in the 2020 Tour of Flanders where his archrival Mathieu van der Poel beat him in a sprint finish.

A pending account with the cobblestones that Van Aert has decided to definitively settle with a complete turnaround in his preparation that began with a change of coach in the autumn and continued with a significantly reduced cyclocross season to then start the road season with races purely for preparation: Clásica de Jaén, Volta ao Algarve, and concluding this preliminary conditioning at the Opening Weekend of the classics where, not in top form, he was already a protagonist winning Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne, another race that was not yet in his palmares.

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As Mathieu Heijboer, Van Aert's new coach, announced, the next step in the plan is a three-week altitude training camp on Mount Teide in the company of Jan Tratnik, young Per Strand Hagenes, and his trusted teammate Tiesj Benoot.

This period involves more efficient training work and, on the other hand, avoiding fatigue in races like Strade Bianche or Milan-San Remo when there is still almost a month until the Tour of Flanders. "The days of Strade and Milan-San Remo will be tough to watch on TV after our training. Luckily, I already have those two races in my pocket," resigned Wout van Aert.

He will have less of a problem missing Paris-Nice or Tirreno-Adriatico as "I have always considered those races as preparation but nowadays, they are too tough to be taken as pure training, so the only advantage is not racing them," stating at the same time that "with the current science of training, it is not necessary to have the fatigue that those races added, which was necessary to be really good."

Wout van Aert's return to competition is scheduled for the E3 Saxo Classic, a race he was able to win last year against two giants like Mathieu van der Poel and Tadej Pogacar in what was surely one of the best days of cycling in all of 2023, to then go on to directly compete in the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix.