Mathieu Heijboer, coach of Wout van Aert: "Brabantse Pijl and Amstel? It was really about these two weeks…"

Wout van Aert lined up on Sunday as one of the favorites for the Monument that suits him best: Paris-Roubaix. But the Belgian rider from Visma | Lease a Bike never truly featured at the front of the race, something noticed by his team as well. Team director Grischa Niermann and trainer Mathieu Heijboer spoke on behalf of the Dutch squad, and In de Leiderstrui caught their comments.

Van Aert himself explained the reasons for his weaker mid-race performance at Paris-Roubaix: “I was involved in a crash just before the first cobbled sector. It wasn’t too bad, but it forced me to chase from the back for a long time. In the Forest of Arenberg, I just didn’t have the legs, I simply wasn’t good enough.”

“What I understand is that he just didn’t have the legs. There wasn’t anything else going on,” confirmed Heijboer, who couldn’t yet pinpoint why it went worse than expected. “Whether that’s a disadvantage of the altitude training camp, I don’t know, that’s something we still need to analyze. I think it might have more to do with the fact that Wout missed nearly an entire season last year. But anyway, we still need to review everything.”

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Heijboer: "Not the result we had hoped for"

Wout van Aert’s coach had to think for a moment when asked how he felt after the race in Roubaix. “We didn’t come here for fourth place, so this wasn’t the result we were hoping for. But we fought for what we were worth, and this was his place, so it’s also our place. There’s disappointment in the sense that we aim for the top and want to win, but we didn’t achieve that here.”

“The fourth place was my place, I think. Same result as last week and the same podium or at least the same riders, so then you have to admit that three others were better,” Van Aert had said earlier, echoing the same sentiment.

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Heijboer: "It was mainly about these two weeks"

You’d think Van Aert still has two more spring classics to look forward to, with the Amstel Gold Race and Brabantse Pijl on the calendar, not to mention the Giro coming up. But Heijboer adds some nuance: “Well, the upcoming weeks... Brabantse Pijl and Amstel Gold Race? It was really about these two weeks,” he said, referring to the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix. “We just see that compared to the other three, he’s lacking a bit and only seems to come through later. But that’s not enough to fight for the win here.”

Visma | Lease a Bike is known as a team that thoroughly reviews everything, and that’s exactly what Heijboer wants to do before drawing conclusions after the cobbled classics. “We need to lay everything out. For now, it’s still too early to say where things went wrong or what could be improved process-wise.”

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