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How quickly things can change in a Grand Tour. In the space of four race days, Team Visma-Lease a Bike have two stage wins at this Giro d’Italia. Only Lidl-Trek, with their four wins, have more at the race so far. The much-hyped crosswind chaos never really materialised on stage 12, but the Dutch squad still policed the front of the peloton, using all their race savvy and experience to produce their most cohesive performance of the race so far, delivering Olav Kooij to the last 200m, where the Dutchman duly clinched glory. But how have they turned things around after a disappointing Spring Classics campaign and slow start to the Corsa Rosa?
After two missed sprint opportunities with Kooij, including a lead-out slip-up on stage six into Napoli, how did they come good on stage 12? The obvious answer is that their talisman, Wout van Aert, has refound his mojo. Despite Jonas Vingegaard’s two Tour de France overall wins, Van Aert remains the most important member of this team. When he is on form, the team is on form. In part, it is down to morale. Van Aert often shoulders the weight of the pressure of the Belgian cycling world, the weight of his own team and the weight of his own expectations — justifiably lofty for a man who has 13 Grand Tour stage wins. Van Aert broke the spell of bad luck at his redemptive win in Siena’s Piazza del Campo on stage nine's strade bianche, and it now appears that the weight has lifted.
Of course, morale only gets you so far — there were a number of highly motivated teams coming into the final kilometre into Viadana, but only a handful of riders in the world could have the strength to stay on the front for 750m and not be passed like Van Aert did. At the finish, the man himself said: “We used our horsepower." He was also referring to the exceptional work done by Edoardo Affini, who took control of the penultimate kilometre before Van Aert came to the front. But it was the Belgian’s turn that was the most impressive moment of the day. On Sunday’s gravel stage, he was the second-best rider behind the current maglia rosa, Isaac del Toro (UAE Team Emirates-XRG), but if his performance over the gravel showed he could win bike races again, today showed he could be the best rider in the peloton again.
As previously said, Van Aert is the most important cog in the Visma machine. When he is firing on all cylinders, the team wins. But it may go even further than that. His career-long rival Mathieu van der Poel may be the best Classics rider and Tadej Pogačar may be the best outright rider, both racking up huge numbers of prestigious wins for their teams down to their individual performances, but Van Aert is the best team rider. He may make mistakes, miscalculations and bad calls, like the blunder at Dwars door Vlaanderen in April. But if you want your whole team to be winning — and over any terrain — Van Aert is your man; he is a domestique deluxe who can win himself. Olav Kooij was the beneficiary today, and the Dutchman's relief at breaking his stage win duck was apparent at the finish. It was a second Grand Tour win for Kooij after last year’s victory in Naples, and he acknowledged the role his team’s talisman, Van Aert played in this latest triumph: “Only he can do it. Having his support is extraordinary.”
It took nine stages of this Giro — and arguably five months of 2025 — for Visma to really get going, but now they are on a roll. Kooij certainly believes so: “We are definitely not done yet.” They have another chance tomorrow. The final 10% ramps up to Monte Berico will be a significant challenge for Van Aert against the race’s best climbers, but when he’s on form, he’s hard to rule out completely. In 2021, he won the Mont Ventoux stage, no less, at the Tour. A year later at la Grande Boucle, his climbing exploits were even more impressive, including dropping Pogačar off the wheel as he set up Vingegaard for victory atop the Hautacam in the Pyrenees, sealing the team’s first maillot jaune. He will be back on the roads of France to support Vingegaard again, and with both riders fully fit, fans can expect a mouthwatering duel with Pogačar, a battle which didn’t materialise last year due to the two Visma riders’ disrupted build-ups.
But for now, Van Aert is fully focused on more success at the Giro. For a man and a team who have so far produced their best performances across the border in France in July, they are beginning to stamp their authority on this Italian Grand Tour.
