Originally Posted by
79pmooney
Visma Lease-a-Bike: What a day! Won both the Men's and Women's. And lost their #1 rider for weeks. USA rider Matteo Jorgenson wins the Men's with an impressive attack, Marianne Vos survives chaos in the Women's to mount a 2-woman attack with 12 km to go. (You don't want to go into a two woman sprint with her!) And Wout Van Aert touches a teammates wheel, breaks a collarbone and several ribs. Totally sucks. I know. I've done exactly that.
I wish Wout could manage to ride a little smarter. He doesn't always put himself where he needs to be. This race he was behind his teammate - good. An acceleration happened. He yelled "Go!" to his teammate who went - but not as quickly as Wout and Wout touched his wheel and took himself and five others out. His wasn't the only collarbone. That's Cat 4/5 racing, not World Tour.
You're seriously going to suggest that Wout should "ride a little smarter"? This reminds me of the Bike Forums poster who insisted he could teach World Tour pros how to handle their bikes better because he'd once taken a motorcycle handling course.
Many top pro riders have been saying that the races have become harder from the gun and far more relentless lately. Meanwhile, the three or four best riders have come to seem almost impossible to beat. So the riders just below that level feel unremitting pressure to ride out of their skins.
And, of course, they can ride as intelligently as humanly possible, but occasional crashes are inevitable for riders trying to win. As the racers say: riding to win means being willing to lose.
Finally, on the question of van Aert's bike handling skills, here's what came up from a quick search for "Wout van Aert cyclocross wins":
"He started his career in cyclocross where he became World champion (2016, 2017, 2018) and Belgian champion (2016, 2017, 2018, 2021, 2022)."