"It's Been A Goal Since 2018" — Van Aert Ends Visma's 42-Year Paris-Roubaix Men's Drought And Points To The Sky For Michael Goolaerts As The Belgian Finally Claims The Cobblestone Trophy After Eight Years Of Chasing
Twenty-four hours after the finish, Wout van Aert sat in the Visma-Lease a Bike recovery lounge in Roosdaal, still holding the Paris-Roubaix cobblestone that had eluded him across seven previous attempts. The Belgian had slept four hours. His voice was hoarse from what his team described as "the longest post-race phone call" he had ever conducted — from the velodrome press room on Sunday evening all the way back to the team hotel on the Compiègne ring road. At the bottom of the call list was a single contact: the Goolaerts family, in the village of Lier.
"It's been a goal since 2018," Van Aert said on Monday morning, the words measured in a way they had not been immediately after Sunday's velodrome finish. "That is eight years ago now. Eight years ago I lost a teammate, Michael Goolaerts, on the cobbles of this race. Ever since then I have wanted to come here, win it, and point my finger to the sky for him. Yesterday I got to do that." The Belgian's finger-to-the-sky celebration as he crossed the line a clear bike length ahead of Tadej Pogačar had been the most-replayed piece of footage on Flemish television by midnight. Most viewers understood it instinctively. A subset — the ones who remembered the 2018 race — understood it completely.
The numbers around Visma's first ever men's Paris-Roubaix victory are the numbers of institutional pain. Forty-two consecutive starts without a win, stretching back to the team's 1984 debut as Kwantum Hallen-Yoko. Fifteen podiums. Four second places. Zero victories. The team that won the women's Paris-Roubaix on Saturday with Pauline Ferrand-Prévot had never before won the men's version. On Sunday evening, the team bus became the first Visma (in all its iterations — Rabobank, LottoNL-Jumbo, Team Jumbo-Visma) to leave the André-Pétrieux velodrome with the trophy on board.
"Forty-two years," sports director Grischa Niermann said, running a hand through his hair in the mechanics' area of the team truck. "Forty-two years this team has been coming to this race. I have been part of eighteen of them, as a rider and a director. Nobody on this team had ever been on the winning bus at Roubaix until last night. Nobody." The Visma staff handbook — a pre-race document every team member receives on the Thursday before the race — contains a single paragraph about Goolaerts, who died of cardiac arrest during the 2018 edition. Every rider and every staff member is required to read it before the race. Van Aert wrote the current version of the paragraph in 2023.
The tactical execution on Sunday was, in Christophe Laporte's words, "the best road-race ride I have ever seen from Wout." Van Aert survived the same two punctures that had looked catastrophic on live television, bridged both deficits inside ten kilometres, and then — in the move Niermann had flagged as the key — sat on Pogačar's wheel across the entire final 53 kilometres without taking a single turn beyond the absolute minimum. "The world champion was attacking me every three minutes," Van Aert said. "I had to match every acceleration. I had to not come through in the rotations because I knew a sprint in the velodrome was my only card. Every person watching that race knew I was not going to take a turn. And I still had to get to Roubaix. That is the hardest 53 kilometres I have ever ridden."
The emotional aftermath has belonged to Van Aert's family and to the memory of Goolaerts. Sarah De Bie, Van Aert's wife, had flown in from Herentals on Sunday morning with the couple's three children and was waiting in the Visma VIP area when Wout emerged from doping control at 19:15 local time. The footage of the meeting — Van Aert lifting his five-year-old son Georges onto his shoulders, the cobblestone trophy tucked under his left arm — became the most-shared image from the weekend on Belgian social media. By midnight, the Goolaerts family had posted a single message on the Michael Goolaerts Foundation Instagram account: "Eight years. Thank you, Wout. Michael would have been the first man to hug you."
What happens next for Van Aert is a question the 31-year-old answered without any hesitation on Monday. "I am not racing the Ardennes. My spring is done. I will take ten days off the bike, then start preparing for the Tour de France." Visma had pencilled in a possible Liège-Bastogne-Liège start as late as Thursday of last week, but Niermann confirmed on Monday that the plan had been abandoned. "Wout has given everything he had to give this spring. He finished fourth at Flanders, he won Paris-Roubaix, he has nothing left to prove in April. We take him home, we let him rest, and we bring him back in June as fresh as possible for July." The Tour de France starts on 4 July in Barcelona.
For Visma-Lease a Bike, Sunday's victory is the final piece of a cobbled puzzle the team has been trying to solve for four decades. Three of the five Monuments now sit in the team's trophy cabinet from 2026 alone: Milan-San Remo no (that was Pogačar), but Tour of Flanders Femmes and both editions of Paris-Roubaix yes. The men's team now turns to Grand Tour targets, while Ferrand-Prévot heads to Amstel Gold Race Ladies on Sunday as the outstanding favourite. The team that had never won Roubaix in forty-two years has now won the race twice in thirty-six hours. The numbers, as Niermann said on the truck ramp at midnight, "are finally pointing the right way."