With screams of pain on a stretcher
Van Aert suffers several broken bones in a mass fall
March 27, 2024, 7:29 p.m
The classic season is over: cycling superstar Wout van Aert is seriously injured in a mass fall in front of the upcoming Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix monuments. Crying and screaming in pain, he is taken to the hospital with broken bones.
Belgian professional cyclist Wout van Aert suffered several broken bones in his serious fall during the one-day race Across Flanders. His team Visma-Lease a Bike announced this in the evening. For the 29-year-old, the classic season is over.
Van Aert was diagnosed with a broken collarbone and various rib fractures in the hospital. According to the team, his downtime is unclear. Van Aert will definitely miss the Tour of Flanders on Sunday as well as Paris-Roubaix (April 7th) and the Amstel Gold Race (April 14th). He would have been one of the favorites there. US professional cyclist Matteo Jorgenson ultimately won the race, which was overshadowed by the serious fall of his Belgian captain. After 188.6 kilometers in Waregem, the 24-year-old from the Visma-Lease a Bike team emerged from a breakaway group ahead of the Norwegian Jonas Abrahamsen (Uno-X) and the Swiss Stefan Küng (Groupama-FDJ).
“This season has been a dream for me so far,” said Jorgenson, “but I saw Wout’s fall up close and it looked really bad. My thoughts are with him.” Whether van Aert can take part in the Giro d’Italia from May 4th as planned seems at least questionable. There he was supposed to take part in a major tour as captain for the first time.
Van Aert loses control of bike
The German veteran John Degenkolb (Gera/dsm-unternehmenich PostNL) showed a strong race and was very active in the first chasing group. However, the former Roubaix winner was unable to intervene in the fight for victory and ended up in 20th place. The best German was Nils Politt (Cologne/UAE Team Emirates) in a good twelfth place. The only German winner of “Dwars door Vlaanderen” remains Olaf Ludwig in 1992, and since then no German professional has finished in the top three.
Van Aert was involved in a mass crash 67 kilometers before the end of the race. The nine-time Tour stage winner lost control of his bike at high speed and a total of around a dozen riders fell. Van Aert’s yellow Visma jersey was almost completely torn, with abrasions appearing on his back. The Belgian screamed in pain as he was put on a stretcher, crying, and taken into an ambulance.
Other injured riders were the Eritrean Biniam Girmay and the Belgian Jasper Stuyven from Lidl-Trek, whose teammate Mads Pedersen from Denmark also fell. Van Aert had already had a painful fall in the E3 Harelbeke one-day race last Friday.