Friday, March 29, 2024 at 5:58 PM
Visma | Lease a Bike has provided some more information about Wout van Aert’s current situation. At a press conference, sports director Grischa Niermann, among others, discussed the fall in more detail. “It is still too early to think about the future,” Niermann told the assembled press.
“Van Aert is doing okay, but he still suffers a lot after the fall, the operation and the abrasions. Hopefully he can go home soon, but that is not yet clear. Riders are very good at putting things into perspective and looking ahead, but Wout was not that far this morning. He also realizes that: you can have many ideas about what you want, but you must first be able to go to the toilet pain-free, so to speak. Hopefully that will be possible in a few days.”
The Belgian has no insight into cycling yet. “I don’t know when you can cycle again. Considering the circumstances, things are going pretty well, but it hasn’t been nothing. Wout still remembers everything, but he doesn’t know what happened. It all happened so quickly. We have to be there for him now,” Niermann added, without going into details about the near future. “We always have a plan B, but it is far too early to think about that.”
“Hopefully he can go home soon. Then when we know more, we can talk about the next goals. A schedule, that’s something for the doctors. But he won’t be on his bike on Monday, will he?” Niermann concluded.
Tiesj Benoot also spoke. Benoot was very upset after Dwars door Vlaanderen, because he also thought he was the cause of the fall. “But that was apparently not correct,” Benoot said at the press moment. “Matteo (Jorgenson, ed.) saw it happen and Wout’s explanation was also different from what I thought. Without clear images you cannot be sure, but with all the stories I can form an image of what happened. You drive together to a point and no one wants to brake. Then sometimes accidents happen.”
Benoot: “Wout will be our biggest supporter”
“Wout doesn’t really know what happened, but he was hyper-focused and he would have thought it strange if he had tapped my rear wheel. He felt like his bike was suddenly gone from underneath him. It goes so fast and with such a blow I can imagine that you no longer remember what happened. He’ll still be fine, I think, given the speed. It was a racing incident.”
Visma | Lease a Bike now has to continue without Van Aert, which is not easy. “It is shit that we have lost our leader. In the last 3 months we have been together more than we have seen our partner. But I’m proud of how we kept driving. Wout himself says that we can go for it, even if he is not there. He will be our biggest supporter. That motivates us.”
2024-03-29 16:58:00
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