There are technical, tactical and psychological reasons behind the many second places of the Belgian, beaten in the sprint by Pedersen in Tirana
When Wout Van Aert appeared to us, we all thought the same thing: never seen a runner like this. It is probably the most complete there is, if we take off from the Tadej Pogacar games that as you know does another sport. At the 2021 tour, Van Aert won three stages: the Saint-Émilion chrono, the final sprint on the Champs -ésées and a high mountain stage, the one with the double passage on Mont Ventoux. The last two runners succeeded in such a sample of the best of cycling on a Tour de France had been Bernard Hinault in 1979 and Eddy Merckx in 1974. Two monsters. The following year, with the tour that started from Denmark, Van Aert arrived three times second in the first three stages: in the Copenhagen chrono behind Lamp, in the Nyborg sprint beaten by Jakobsen, and still in the Singerborg sprint behind Groenewegen. That was also a record: only another runner had managed to make three second consecutive places in the history of the tour: Alfredo Binda in 1930, also in the first three stages. It was precisely in Denmark that we started to suspect that this story of second places would become a catchphrase: if it is true that the second is the first of the losers, the attitude of Van Aert to the defeat was beginning to look like a constant.