The Ecstasy of Amstel Gold
Ardennes Week begins in earnest, and the puncheurs and puncheuses take center stage.
It turns out that Wout van Aert, who suffered fractures to his ribs and collarbone in a crash in Dwars Door Vlaanderen two weeks ago, is not going to be able to recover in time to ride the Giro d’Italia. So van Aert said in a video released by Visma-Lease a Bike on Thursday.
A video in English, I might add, despite van Aert being a native Dutch speaker and his team being headquartered in the Netherlands. Interesting, though not unwelcome from someone who speaks English and a little French and would very much like to avoid learning Dutch if possible.1
Anyway, van Aert, being a man and not Wolverine, is still too sore in the ribs to get back on his bike, which means he won’t be able to put in a proper training schedule before the Giro kicks off in three weeks. And, like, no shit. The man got into a car crash without the car 16 days ago, of course he’s not going to recover in time to deliver an outlier performance one of the hardest sporting events on the planet.
It’s a huge bummer for van Aert, who was headed to his first grand tour without even limited domestique duties, and that’s not even accounting for the fact that he missed out on Ronde van Vlaanderen and Paris-Roubaix. I hope he recovers well and comes back at full strength for the Olympics, because goddamn this guy needs a big win badly.