With the setbacks of the previous year, Van Aert has raised the bar for the year 2025.

Last weekend, Wout van Aert won his first two races of the cyclocross season. The second of his victories, which came in the World Cup race in Dendermonde, was a tour de force that brought back memories of his very best days. Now, the rider for Visma–Lease a Bike, who is thirty years old, has disclosed, through Het Laatste Nieuws, a very ambitious schedule for the first half of the year. This schedule involves competing in both the Tour de France and the Giro d’Italia.

It is only natural that van Aert will want to find some sort of redemption after a year that was marred by two terrible accidents. He will want to demonstrate that he is still capable of being a big force in the sport, and he will want to chase ambitions that were rendered impossible by the catastrophes that occurred during the previous season. As an illustration, the Giro had been included in his program the previous year; however, it was removed when he was involved in an accident in the Dwars door Vlaanderen.

Even after almost a year has passed, van Aert is still experiencing the effects of the accident that he was involved in. The individual stated, “During the second half of the Dendermonde race, I experienced some difficulty with my right leg; however, it was not to the extent that I had to slow down.” Because of the incident that occurred in March, I am still able to feel my knee on a daily basis, as well as my back and my ribs. I am very delighted that my body is now capable of handling such a muddy race, because climbing through mud up to the ankles is truly an assault on the body. Those sections of my body still require maintenance on a daily basis, so I am very happy that my body can already handle such a muddy race.

It goes without saying that the way in which he dominated that race also provided him with confidence for the approaching forthcoming season. “I also learnt this weekend that the situation is certainly not bad in terms of condition,” he said. “It is certainly not a bad situation.”

Currently, he is in La Nucia, Spain, where he is participating in a winter training session with his team. The World Cup events that he will compete in will take place in Benidorm on January 19 and Maasmechelen on January 25. These will be his final two cyclocross races. In the Clásica Jaén, which will take place on February 17, three weeks after that, he will compete in his first road race of the year. This will be followed by the first stage of the five-stage Volta ao Algarve, which will take place around two days after that. He will be competing against the likes of João Almeida (UAE Team Emirates), Primož Roglič (Red Bull–BORA–hansgrohe), and Geraint Thomas (INEOS Grenadiers) in that event, and he is hoping to at least win a stage, just like he did the previous year.Two events are scheduled to take place in the month of March. The Omloop Nieuwsblad will take place on the first day of the month, and then the Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne will take place the following day. Following that, there will be a camp at a high altitude in Tenerife, where preparations will be made for the major spring Classics, beginning with the E3 Saxo Classic being held on March 28. It is then followed by the Gent-Wevelgem on March 30 and a reunion with the Dwars door Vlaanderen on April 2. Both of these events take place in rapid succession. These races may be considered preparation for his two major ambitions for the spring, which are the Tour of Flanders and the Paris-Roubaix, neither of which he has yet won. On the 20th of April, Van Aert’s Classics season will come to a close with the Amstel Gold Race.

This results in eight challenging one-day races spread out over a period of fifty-one days, which is quite a gruelling schedule. Furthermore, the Giro d’Italia starts less than three weeks after the Amstel. Even for a celebrity, that is a lofty expectation to have. While competing in the Giro, he will be looking to win stages and will also be providing leadout support for Olav Kooij, who is an outstanding young sprinter for Visma. Van Aert will then be backing Jonas Vingegaard, a two-time champion of the Tour de France, in his attempt to grab the yellow jersey away from Tadej Pogačar, who won both the Giro and the Tour de France in the previous year. This is presuming that everything has gone according to plan. It is also possible that he is interested in purchasing an additional Koda Green Jersey.

He shared his thoughts with Sporza, saying, “I was pleasantly surprised to learn that there are so many transition stages and stages for puncheurs in the Tour.” I also noticed that there are a great number of little hills, even in the first week of the project. The opening week of the Tour of 2022 is being brought to mind quite a bit by this. In the Tour de France, van Aert achieved a podium finish in eight stages, achieving victory in three of those stages and claiming the Škoda Green Jersey.

Increasing safety in the sport, which was shaken by a number of high-profile crashes in the previous year, including his own, is another thing that Van Aert has been thinking about. Particularly, he has been reflecting on the accident that he experienced at the Vuelta, which took place during a rainy descent. In that interview with Sporza, he advocated for reducing the maximum speeds that a bike might reach by limiting the amount of gears that it could have.

It is my view that if the number of gears were restricted, the sport would be a great deal safer. Other cyclists are not of the same opinion. However, I am confident that if you are on a descent with a gear limit, absolutely no one will be able to move up. At this point, the gears are so large that you continue to speculate about passing them.

Four months after the crash that occurred during the Vuelta, van Aert has recovered to his previous level of performance and has set a very high standard for himself for this year. The thought of being able to reflect on a victory in the Tour of Flanders or Paris-Roubaix in a year’s time is something that really excites me. I would have to say that is at the very top of my list. The previous year also taught me that if I am able to ride a Grand Tour in a free manner, I will have a better chance of being successful.