In another setback for hard-luck Wout van Aert, the Belgian star will miss Saturday\u2019s Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and put his spring classics campaign on hold after falling ill, his team confirmed Thursday.<\/p>\n
The Visma-Lease a Bike star was set to debut his 2026 road season at the Flemish classic in Belgium\u2019s Opening Weekend, but now he will focus on recovery after sickness struck during a stint in a snow-bound altitude camp in Spain.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously it\u2019s a big blow for me to miss out on my first race, having prepared for the classics season the whole winter. We had a good training camp at Sierra Nevada and I was feeling really strong,\u201d Van Aert said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut unfortunately, it\u2019s also that time of the year where it\u2019s easy to fall ill. I remain positive about the feeling I had on training and am confident that I will be able to return to racing soon. Just not this Saturday.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the latest setback for Visma, which has seen a string of crashes, illnesses, and delays to open the 2026 racing season.<\/p>\n
That means there\u2019s no direct matchup against longtime rival Mathieu van der Poel, who confirmed he\u2019ll race Saturday in his road season debut.<\/p>\n
Van Aert won Omloop in 2022 and was hoping to put an ankle injury suffered this winter during cyclocross firmly behind him going into the Opening Weekend.<\/p>\n
His spring calendar should otherwise remain on track, with the Ename Samyn Classic on March 3 and Strade Bianche on March 7 in a showdown with Tadej Poga\u010dar still on the books.<\/p>\n
He will be replaced in the Visma lineup by Italian rider Pietro Mattio as Visma reshuffles for the Belgian opener.<\/p>\n
Christopher Laporte, who looks back on track after an illness-plagued 2025, will take the lead for the Killer Bees despite crashing out of Ruta del Sol last week.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/velo.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Z8A_7392-2-2.jpg”] Andrew Hood Updated February 26, 2026 06:44AM In another setback for hard-luck Wout van Aert, the Belgian star will miss Saturday\u2019s Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and put his spring classics campaign on hold after falling ill, his team confirmed Thursday. The Visma-Lease a Bike star was set to debut his 2026 road season […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[226,71],"class_list":["post-1794703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-crawlmanager","tag-velo-outsideonline-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1794703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1794703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1794703\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1794703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1794703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1794703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}