How Wout van Aert Found Roubaix Redemption with a Bunny Hop

Wout van Aert’s heart-melting victory over Tadej Pogačar at Paris-Roubaix was born from years of agony, frustration, and a perfectly timed bunny hop.

Speaking to fans Monday during a virtual group ride, Van Aert said his redemptive victory at the Hell of the North earlier this month had been gestating for 9 months.

The moment Van Aert gapped Pogačar on the slick stones of the Montmartre last summer in the final stage of the Tour de France was the moment he realized he’s still got it.

“That victory changed everything,” Van Aert said of his drizzly, grizzly triumph last July. “Until then, I was convinced that Pogačar and Van der Poel would always be difficult to beat.”

Iconic victory on the Champs-Élysées quashed all the doubts.

“I know that many factors played a role that day – I was much fresher than Pogacar, for example,” Van Aert said. “But by beating him, I realized that I was still capable of winning against these riders if all the conditions were right.

“It’s like a new mindset was born,” he said.

As Van Aert said, it changed everything.

Many had feared the Flemish favorite’s best days were over.

The big Belgian admitted over the winter he had feared it, too.

“At some point, with my injuries and the setbacks, I swapped more to the idea of taking it a bit more easy, to avoid risks or danger, to take an easier schedule, to change goals,” he told The Athletic.

COVID before Flanders in 2022. A terribly timed puncture in Roubaix 2023. Devastating injuries in spring and summer 2024. Pogačar’s insatiable hunger for cobblestone dominance.

Van Aert’s lifelong dream to win the Tour of Flanders or Paris-Roubaix was becoming a pipe dream.

Heck, he couldn’t even catch a lucky break at Dwars Door Vlaanderen.

From victory on the Champs to a sixth sense on the cobbles

Filling the finish line photo on the Champs-Élysees clicked a switch.

After he dropped Pogačar in Paris, Van Aert came into the spring classics with new belief and a clear mind. Not even a fractured ankle in winter could cloud his cobblestone vision.

Van Aert said Monday he gained some supernatural sixth sense as he steamed across 55km of pavé in the fastest Roubaix on record.

“Hyperfocus took over,” he said.

He survived a puncture setback and withstood Pogačar’s fiercest attacks. He saw the race in slow motion.

It made the 2-up sprint a formality.

Pogi was fried by a bike change fiasco, and Van Aert was locked in.

“I was on Pogačar’s wheel, where I wanted to be. I didn’t doubt myself anymore, and I was ready to sprint,” he said. “It’s like I was no longer aware of what was happening around me.”

And it turns out Van Aert might not even have made it to the velodrome without his cobblestone clarity.

Van Aert explained the image he posted to Instagram of the bunny hop he executed with all the skill of a champion ‘crosser as he rattled over the cratered stones of the Carrefour de l’Arbre.

“That was in the famous left-hand bend,” he told fans. “I remember thinking just before: ‘It was on this stone that I got a flat tire in 2023.’ That’s why I jumped over it.

“I didn’t realize I was going so high,” he laughed. “It’s a funny photo with a nice story.”

Van Aert still relishing the ‘best moment in my career’

Nice story indeed.

There wasn’t a dry eye in the house when Van Aert collapsed with relief on the infield of the Roubaix velodrome.

It’s a win that will forever top the 31-year-old’s palmarès and which no bike fan could be sour about.

The Killer Bees are still bathing in the glow of their talismanic leader sealing the monument triumph they wanted ever since he won San Remo in 2020.

The Dutch team just released a special t-shirt, poster, and even a 500-piece jigsaw puzzle of winning Wout. The Lease a Bike sponsoring brand daubed a memorial mural of Van Aert across the tarmac of its new offices in Mechelen, Flanders.

“Paris-Roubaix was the best moment of my career,” Van Aert said Monday on the Rouvy group ride.

“I hope to win other big races, but I’m still savoring this victory. I felt a much greater sense of relief than after other major successes.”

Next up for Wout?

Supporting Jonas Vingegaard at the Critérium du Dauphiné and Tour de France this summer.

Jonas might have just gotten back his most important superdomestique.