Powless Hangs Painful Defeat on van Aert and Visma–Lease a Bike in Dwars door Vlaanderen

A brilliant Visma breakaway

The race in which van Aert crashed last year and ruined the first half of his season was supposed to become his renaissance in 2025 ahead of his announced targets, Sunday’s Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix one week later. And his team really did have a wonderful strategy.

With 72 km left to ride in the 184.2 km race from Roeselare to Waregem, four Visma riders—Edoardo Affini, Tiesj Benoot, last year’s winner Matteo Jorgenson and van Aert—burst away from the peloton and soon had a 10-second lead. Affini quickly dropped away, but the other three Visma riders eventually joined up with riders that had been ahead of them—Rasmus Søjberg Pedersen (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale), Mikkel Bjerg (UAE Team Emirates–XRG), Fabio Van den Bossche (Alpecin-Deceuninck) and Powless—forming a strong breakaway group.

However, their lead over the peloton, in which the winner of last weekend’s Gent-Wevelgem, Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) was the most active and insistent pursuer, hovered between 12 and 22 seconds. Three riders gradually dropped away from the lead group, leaving Powless surrounded by the yellow of three Visma–Lease a Bike riders. The four worked well together, and with about 45 km to go, the pursuers began to lose hope, motivation and/or energy, as the gap increased to 33 seconds.

A bad decision

With 40 km left to race, they had a lead of 42 seconds, which ballooned to 54 seconds with 19 km left. It was clear by then that the winner would come from the leading group of four, and Visma had three chances out of four to pick up the big prize. All they had to do was come up with the best way to beat Powless. They chose to let van Aert take him on in a sprint. It was the wrong choice, as a heartbroken van Aert himself admitted after the race.

“I’m fully responsible for this loss,” he said. “It was me that made the call to go for a sprint, and I asked Matteo [Jorgenson] and Tiesj [Benoot] to just control in the final and bring me to the line. I was confident that I could win, but in the sprint, I cramped completely and Neilson Powless turned out to be stronger.”

In retrospect, the better strategy would have been to let Jorgenson or Benoot attack with about 2 km left to race, in the expectation that Powless would follow and tire himself out, leaving the door open for van Aert to pick up the spoils. But he clearly overestimated himself and underestimated the American.

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Van Aert’s Mea Culpa

“It’s a mistake because I was too selfish in the final,” van Aert went on to say. “I wanted this victory so [badly], especially after all the criticism I’ve been through and all the bad luck I’ve been through last year. I was thinking about myself. I just wanted no chance that we miss or that one of my teammates win this race—and that’s a huge mistake. It’s not who I am and that’s why I’m extremely disappointed. I did it against what’s my nature. It’s not really me.”

Jorgenson was also frank afterwards. “We did a beautiful race up until 10k to go,” he said. “We decided to go for the sprint with Wout and it was the wrong decision. We can be honest about that. Also, we underestimated Neilson. Really chapeau to Neilson and congrats, that was a really great sprint from him.”

After Jorgenson became the first American to win the Dwars door Vlaanderen last year, the win by Powless makes it two American wins in a row. “I thought I was riding for second place,” the delighted winner said. “I can’t believe it. I’m so happy. I felt really strong today, but I didn’t think I had a chance to win from that group.”

His win was hugely important for his EF Education–EasyPost team, which had won just one minor race all season and, with its small budget, has to worry about retaining its WorldTour status in this critical season.

What now for Wout?

Ironically, second place for van Aert was his best performance of what has so far been a terribly disappointing season. But in a way, it was also his worst performance. His team had ridden a perfect race, he had been given the perfect platform for a victory and all he had to do was beat Powless, a quick but not green-jersey-quick rider, as van Aert used to be.

This debacle (and that’s what it was, despite the fact that Visma had three of the top four finishers) leaves many questions open about van Aert’s near-term future. Should he ride in Sunday’s Tour of Flanders, with all of Flanders watching him? Given his present form, I don’t see how he can make it onto the podium against Pedersen, Mathieu van der Poel, Filippo Ganna, and Tadej Pogačar.

And what should be his future role in the team? Should he be a support rider for Jorgenson and Jonas Vingegaard until he recovers his best form? The knee he injured in the Vuelta crash at the end of the season may still be affecting him. Some injuries take a long time to heal completely, including those involving the knee. The knee is the pivot of the pedal action; it transfers power from the thighs to the foot. If it can’t work efficiently, the result is a cramp or weakness.

Or perhaps it is a psychological issue, the frustration that led him to make the wrong choice in this race. Perhaps this will be a wake-up call and he will be his old cool and powerful self on Sunday in the Tour of Flanders. I hope so.