2024-03-31 07:57:34
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Polytraumatized, Wout van Aert, one of the stars of the peloton, suffers from burns on his back and especially fractures to his collarbone, ribs and sternum, enough to destroy his dream of winning the Tour of Flanders on Sunday or Paris-Roubaix on the weekend. next end. The Belgian, who is expected to be absent for many weeks, was operated on “successfully” on Thursday in Herentals, his hometown, according to his Visma-Lease a Bike team.
“His participation in the Tour of Italy [en mai] is uncertain. He will make a decision in the coming weeks depending on the progress of his convalescence,” added the Dutch team. Another Belgian runner, Jasper Stuyven, took part in the pool in the same hospital to repair a broken collarbone.
Huge pressure
“Maybe we’ll have coffee together in the morning,” the winner of Milan-Sanremo 2021 preferred to laugh to the Flemish daily HLN. Luxembourger Alex Kirsch, his teammate at Lidl-Trek, broke his hand. Their leader Mads Pedersen escaped with scratches.
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If the fall on Wednesday was particularly heavy, rare are the races which deliver a clean medical report. Since the start of the season, dozens of runners have ended up in the ambulance. Just last month, several of them (Sénéchal, Rui Costa, Johannessen, Lemmen, Capiot, Ackermann, Kelderman, Gee, etc.) broke their collarbones: the cyclists’ fracture.
Sometimes accidents take an even more dramatic turn. The death of Gino Mäder in the descent of a pass during the Tour de Suisse last June is still remembered.
On Wednesday, the fall took place on an ultra-fast and reputedly dangerous false-flat descent, to the point that it was removed from the Tour of Flanders route. “Maybe we will remove it from all our races,” said Tomas van den Spiegel on behalf of the organizers of the Flanders Classics.
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But the riders also have their share of responsibility by going faster and faster and braking later and later, also thanks to more efficient disc brakes. “The average level of the peloton is very high and the pressure is enormous to be well placed at the front,” underlines Belgian veteran Tim Declercq, of the Lidl-Trek team.
“We are all afraid”
Street furniture intended to slow down automobile traffic (reserves, islands, etc.) adds to the danger. “By car, you enter city centers at 30 km/h. We reach 60 km/h on a bike. Just saying that settles it,” said Frenchman Benoît Cosnefroy. “Falls are part of our sport but we can act to protect the riders,” says Jan Bakelants, former wearer of the yellow jersey in the Tour de France, nicknamed “Strong Jan” and today consultant for the Flemish media Sporza . This close friend of Wout van Aert offers “a sort of airbag to put on the back like on skis”, which will be compulsory next season in the World Cup. “We need measures that mitigate the consequences of a fall,” he insists.
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In the meantime, the runners deal with this game of massacre and the physical but also psychological damage it causes. A runner like the Frenchman Pierre Latour cannot overcome his fear of falling on descents, during which he is systematically let go. The Spaniard Enric Mas suffered from the same paralysis before overcoming the disease over time.
Julian Alaphilippe, who came close to the worst by crashing into a tree on Liège-Bastogne-Liège in 2022, admits to being “a little more afraid than before when it goes quickly and we are not far from the fall “. “When you hear a big fall not far from you, the sound of carbon farting, the guys shouting… We are all afraid. I don’t know any cyclist who isn’t afraid,” confesses Benoît Cosnefroy.
A boulevard for Mathieu van der Poel
In the absence of Wout van Aert, Mathieu van der Poel will be the huge favorite for the Tour of Flanders on Sunday. Grandson of Raymond Poulidor and son of Adrie, winner of the Tour of Flanders in 1986, the reigning world champion knows the history of cycling and is aware of the challenges that now occupy him: becoming one of the best classics riders of all time. In a sport where the past is constantly invoked, Van der Poel, winner of the Tour of Flanders in 2020 and 2022, is starting to weigh in: if he wins on Sunday, he will join Achiel Buysse, Fiorenzo Magni, Eric Leman, Johan Museeuw, Tom Boonen and Fabian Cancellara among the triple winners of the “Ronde”, with the prospect of aiming for a quadruplet never before achieved in 2025. He is also seeking a fifth victory in a Monument to return to the level of Pogacar, the only active rider to have won so many.
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