Wout Van Aert is back in the peloton after nearly two months. After being forced to a long stop due to a crash at Dwars door Vlaanderen last March 27, the Belgian star finally returned to the peloton at the Tour of Norway, with the aim of recovering his condition step by step in view of his next goals, the Tour de France and the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. Of course, as he had already anticipated in recent days, the result will not be important and the road has confirmed that the condition is inevitably far from the best days.

60th, 2’52” behind the winner Thibau Nys (Lidl-Trek), the Belgian phenom lost contact on the final wall with two kilometers to go and then went up his pace. “I am happy with my performance,” he commented, “While I was on the bike I had no pain anywhere, so I hope I can recover the right way. With fractures in his sternum, ribs, and shoulder, the 1994 class had complained that he still had problems when cycling, so for him this is clearly good news, even though he clearly did not push to his full capacity

“My goal was to stay with my teammates at least until a kilometer and a half from the finish, but I realized I was at my limit,” he adds, “I felt in my lungs that I had really gone down. Obviously I was hoping not to suffer, but it’s something you have to move on from. Tomorrow (today, ed.) we have a tougher stage ahead of us and we’ll see how long I can hold up.”