Wout van Aert takes higher road towards Tour de Suisse return

The bulk of Jumbo-Visma’s Tour de France squad has been in action with Jonas Vingegaard at the Critérium du Dauphiné this week, but Wout van Aert has opted for a different approach by making his debut at the Tour de Suisse, which gets underway on Sunday.

Van Aert’s choice has been informed in part by his desire to spend a longer period training at altitude with an eye to both the Tour and August’s World Championships in Glasgow.

The other notable feature of Van Aert’s Tour build-up has been his decision to incorporate a recent block of training in the Swiss Alps in the company of teammate Wilco Kelderman, taking in rides on gravel.

“We wanted to have that extra altitude stimulus at 3,000m and that is not available elsewhere,” Jumbo-Visma coach Mathieu Heijboer told In de Leiderstrui.

Van Aert had already trained in Sierra Nevada in May, but the most recent training camp, staying 3,000m above sea level at Diavolezza, has seen the Belgian encounter plummeting temperatures and snow. Heijboer maintained that the benefits of the altitude and the change in approach offset any concerns about the conditions.

“There is certainly an idea behind it. Wout is someone who likes to seek out new challenges and circumstances. He is not motivated by the same pattern every year, so he indicated at an early stage that he would like to do the Tour, but that he would like to do the preparation differently,” Heijboer said.

“He had already been at 3,000m in 2021, in the run-up to the Worlds in Belgium and he wanted to repeat that, both for the extra altitude stimulus ahead of the Tour, but also because he still wants to perform well at the World Championships afterwards.

“His altitude training has therefore been extended by a week. We always look very closely at how it fits into the overall picture. The main goal is for him to get to the Tour as good as possible, and we think that will work very well this way.”

The first test of Van Aert’s approach will come at the Tour de Suisse, his first race since his ill-starred tilt at Paris-Roubaix in early April. The Belgian will look to shine in the short time trial around Einsiedeln on stage 1, where the favourite will undoubtedly be his compatriot Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep), who makes his competitive return after COVID-19 ended his Giro d’Italia challenge.