'A Bit Disappointing' — Why Van Aert's Auvergne Struggles Are Casting A Shadow Over His Tour de France
Three stages into the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and the conversation around Wout van Aert has taken a familiar, uneasy turn. The Visma-Lease a Bike talisman was billed as one of the headline names of the rebranded Dauphiné, yet he has looked a step short of his best on the opening stages — and with the Tour de France barely three weeks away, his team has been refreshingly candid about it.
"It is a bit disappointing, we are honest about that," was the admission from the Visma camp after Van Aert again struggled to make an impression. It is rare to hear a squad as polished as Visma concede ground so openly, and the frankness underlines how much is riding on the Belgian rediscovering his spark before the Grand Départ in Barcelona on 4 July.
Van Aert's race began on the back foot. His return to competition on the opening stage was described as difficult, the rider himself acknowledging he had "come back down from the pink cloud" after a spring that had promised so much. Stage 3's team time trial, where Visma powered to victory, offered a brief flash of the engine that makes him one of the sport's most complete riders — but the individual sharpness that wins bunch sprints and survives the high mountains has not yet appeared.
On stage 4, the pattern repeated. Visma drove the chase relentlessly across the closing 35km flat run-in to Montrond-les-Bains in an effort to set up their leader, only for Quinn Simmons and the breakaway to hold on by a handful of seconds. The work was there; the finishing kick that would have turned that effort into a stage win was not.
Context matters. Van Aert has built entire seasons around peaking precisely when it counts, and a quiet week in early June is not, by itself, cause for alarm. He has historically used the Dauphiné as a training block rather than a results target, loading his legs in the knowledge that form arrives later. Visma will point to exactly that when pressed, and they would not be wrong to do so.
Yet the worry is harder to dismiss this year because of what Visma are asking of him in July. The team's Tour ambitions hinge on Jonas Vingegaard's general classification challenge against Tadej Pogačar, and Van Aert is the engine expected to control the race, win stages, and shepherd his leader through the chaos of the first week. A Van Aert at ninety per cent changes the calculus for the entire squad.
The remaining Auvergne stages, which turn into the Alps this weekend, will not flatter a rider lacking top-end condition — but they will tell us a great deal. If Van Aert can climb with the front group and contribute to Visma's mountain plans, the early-week concerns will quickly be forgotten. If he continues to slip backwards, the questions will only grow louder.
For now, the honest answer is that nobody — not even Visma — knows quite where Van Aert stands. That uncertainty, a month out from the biggest race of the year, is precisely what makes it the most interesting subplot of the build-up.