Wout van Aert attributes puncture to suspicious glass shards: "It couldn’t have gotten there by accident"

Wout van Aert has his first road race of 2026 under his belt again. The classics specialist from Visma | Lease a Bike felt "pretty good" during Le Samyn but faced a flat tire in the finale after riding over shards of glass. "That couldn’t have happened accidentally," he said.

Van Aert got a flat tire about ten kilometers from the finish. He quickly switched to Pietro Mattio’s bike but was already facing a big time gap at that point. Shortly after, he changed bikes again, this time to the spare bike on his team car. By then, the race was effectively lost.

"At the moment he got the flat tire in the finale, we were a minute and a half behind him," said Visma team director Grischa Niermann afterward on VTM Nieuws. "He first swapped with a teammate and then again with us. At that point, it was obviously too late to get back."

"Wout’s feeling was okay; we didn’t expect him to be amazing today. It’s a pity he couldn’t sprint, but we shouldn’t draw too many conclusions from today. It was good to have raced before the Strade."

Wout van Aert: "Suddenly there were lots of shards of glass"
Van Aert has since responded himself on VTM Nieuws. "I didn’t really curse," he said about the moment he got the puncture. "But it was clearly a great situation for us as a team. Per (Strand Hagenes, ed.) was up front and incredibly strong. Plan B was that I would be up front in the last 10 kilometers and contest the sprint. But then I got the flat and quickly found myself in no man’s land."

What caused the flat? "Suddenly there were lots of shards of glass. That’s strange on a course we had already ridden 5 or 6 times. It couldn’t have gotten there by accident. Still, I tried to start the chase, but you know you can’t outrun a peloton alone."

"I felt good, but I can’t really give myself any real answers because of that missed finale. In any case, it was the right decision to start here. Racing as fast as possible was the goal, that’s what I need now. I’ve been able to take a step forward here," said the 31-year-old, who travels to Italy on Wednesday. There he will race Strade Bianche (March 7), Tirreno-Adriatico (March 9-15), and Milan-San Remo (March 21) consecutively.