Wout van Aert will also aim for the Tour of Flanders or Paris-Roubaix next spring. Winning these Monuments would be 'the cherry on the cake' of his career, he says in an interview with The Athletic, which is part of The New York Times. In the same interview, he is also open about the pressure he feels in Belgium.
"I feel like I've been chasing it my entire career, but I'm still pursuing it," says the 31-year-old Van Aert about victories in the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix. "They would be the cherry on the cake. They would mean everything to me."
“At some point, with injuries and setbacks, I started thinking differently: I wanted to take it a bit easier, avoid risks, race a less demanding program, shift my goals. But I hated races where I wasn’t performing at my level. I realized that I am a cyclist to be the best version of myself and I didn’t want to have regrets afterward.”
Pressure
Especially early in his career, the desire to win the Tour of Flanders or Paris-Roubaix brought a lot of pressure. "As a Belgian, of course, it’s inspiring to watch those races in your youth. They are the biggest, the most important races of the year, held so close to home. That gives me extra motivation. But yes, it’s so huge in our country that the pressure is always there. In my case, I’ve been a favorite in recent years, and then the pressure is even greater because I’m Belgian. That can be hard to deal with.”
“It’s probably something that gets easier over time. Every experience gives you new insights, so I think it no longer affects my performance as it might have before. Especially in cyclocross, in the early years, I couldn’t really perform at championships because I was too nervous. I wasn’t doing it for myself anymore, I thought I had to win to prove something to people. Then the pressure in road racing only grew.”
