THE SWISS ARMY KNIFE

TDF 2020, Stage 5 Gap – Privas 183 km

Wout Van Aert wins Stage 5 ahead of Sunweb’s Cees Bol. Alaphilippe docked 20 seconds for illegal feed, Adam Yates moves into Yellow.

DENVER, CO – Well, dear Readers, this piece will write itself without much effort on my behalf, any and all of the Muses are surely looking out for all those covering this beautiful race in France. I could attempt to vividly describe to you a tricky, hazardous, and technical sprint finish of the Tour de France. But that is not our focus today. I could describe to you how in such a sprint finish Team Sunweb had such a magnificent sprint train for their fast man, Cees Bol, in an age when the coroner will supposedly soon arrive to declare the lead-out train dead. And, yes, dear Readers, Sunweb looked so magnificent with still four men left in the final K, they did everything right. But that is not our focus today. I could talk about my thoughts about how our beloved Musketeer, Julian Alaphilippe (Deceuninck – Quick Step), has been penalized 20 seconds for the pettiest of “crimes,” an inconsequential illegal feed within the last 20 km, thus forcing him out of the maillot jaune that he looks so good in. To see such a thing would normally make us all, for all of us are dear fans of the Musketeer, absolutely sick to our stomachs. But that is not our focus today…besides that I will say, what is our focus today allows us to swallow this Alaphilippe news better. So let us begin.

Wout Van Aert (Jumbo-Visma) has won a full bunch sprint stage of the Tour de France. Yes, the same rider who put so many quality riders to the sword yesterday on the stage’s final climb. I said yesterday and it is even more so true today: Wout Van Aert is the best Swiss Army Knife in the peloton. Alas! if anyone were to officially claim such a nickname as their own, they would be required to be Swiss and fit the definition. So let us use it—The Swiss Army Knife—as a prize earned and passed around to the best man, like a boxer’s belt though to earn it you don’t have to vanquish your predecessor, the title is only passed on and bestowed upon the new greatest Swiss Army Knife when it is obvious for all to see. Since we are on the subject, who was previously The Swiss Army Knife of the peloton? I would probably say Peter Sagan (Bora-Hansgrohe) was at one point, and at some point Michal Kwaitkowski (Ineos Grenadiers) also could claim the title. But it does not matter which had it before Wout, because now it is obvious to all that the title firmly belongs to Van Aert and it is questionable if even his oldest rival, Mathieu Van der Poel (Alpecin-Fenix), will ever be able to challenge him for it. Yes, Wout Van Aert is the most versatile rider in the peloton. We saw him win hard-men races like Strade Bianche, we saw him win a great classic like Milan-Sanremo in a two-up sprint with the peloton of favorites closing in after their Poggio escape. We saw him protecting team leaders and even grabbing bottles in recent previous stages. And yesterday we saw him shredding the peloton on the slopes of proper mountains. And dear Readers, these examples do not even mention his great skills on the cobbles or in the crosswinds, nor do they remind us of his prolific origins from the mud-pits of Belgium.

I remember, dear Readers, watching cyclocross for the first time in the Fall of 2015. Not too long ago, but long enough ago that to watch a non-World Cup cyclocross race in America you had to find the pirated or bootlegged feed with strictly Belgian commentary—“Aye, yai, yai,” as they would say—and you had to watch it live, accounting for time-zones and daylight savings, with no hope of finding a replay in a timely fashion (SIDENOTE: it is funny to think those days are basically gone now, and it is weird and comical that this is a “Back in my day” situation for me). At this point, it was Sven Nys’ last season, but his farewell was being upstaged by and/or caused by two young riders freshly out of their teens at the time: Wout Van Aert and Mathieu Van der Poel. Both had been well on the scene for a year already when both finished on the Cyclocross World Championship podium. So I had already been seeing both the names in headlines on cycling websites for a variation of cycling for which I did not under the reason of its existence. Why don’t these people just mountain bike, what’s the difference? But I checked it out and it was one of the dumbest ideas for a sport I ever saw, and I was totally hooked. The grass, THE MUD, the hills, the stairs, the sand, the technical skills, the horrible weather, the rowdy boozing fans, the mechanics spraying the bikes, and the exhausted and dirty human beings that crossed the finish lines completely spent all went straight to my heart. What badasses. Sorry, dear Readers, I should be focusing on Wout. Well anyways, yes, as I began watching I had to choose: will I root for Wout or for Van der Poel? Reaching to the fringes of my memory where I can be wrong, I think Van der Poel started the season late, and then since Van der Poel was in the World Champion’s jersey, but this Wout guy was just as good I started to root for Wout since he was a slight underdog.

The Wout Van Aert (WVA) v. Mathieu Van der Poel (MVDP) rivalry is my favorite rivalry I have ever seen—I would still put Coppi v. Bartali higher up the list though. In the Fall of 2015, I watched them do battle together every weekend…and I thought I would only watch Cross to hold me over until the Road season was back! MVDP got the better of Wout in many of those races, but honestly it came down to the single fact that MVDP was a better sprinter, besides that they were so evenly matched. Perhaps, it was a Poulidor eternal-second effect that drew me to Wout, ironic because MVDP is the grandson of Poulidor. But I loved watching how Wout never threw in the towel and always gutted out race after race no matter how well it was going for him. The last 20 minutes of a cross, Wout would be methodically deadly, systematically ratcheting up his effort to catch Van der Poel or even hold off his chase. Of course, this was best exemplified in one of my favorite races of all time: the 2016 Cyclocross World Championships in Zolder. It was a perfect race.  It had everything, ‘twas a perfect drama: Sven Nys retired guns a-blazin’, it was a Belgium-Netherlands duel meet like the Kenyans and Ethiopians in the Olympic 10,000 meters, attacks were made, breathes were held, by 20 minutes in all were on the judge of their seats. And then halfway through the race one of those classic moments in cycling happened. It was one of those moments that would be rejected from a movie script as being too farfetched, the audience would not be able to suspend their disbelief. As Van der Poel was dismounting to run up an embankment, his foot swinging back around off the bike got caught in the spokes of Wout Van Aert’s front wheel. Yes, dear Reader, you can’t make this stuff up, here at the crux of the race the two young stars were absolutely losing crucial seconds to their rivals and compatriots in a epically comedic error. After much fidgeting, they got the foot loose and both continued on the race. This was the coal that fed the powerful steam engine that Wout transformed into for the rest of the race. For that last half hour, he hawked down every rival, one by one. It took him until the last lap to catch the final man away, but he did and on the very last challenging section of the of course he broke away to take victory. He was so emotional riding down the final straightaway, it was wonderful to see. Surely he was a great talent then, already doomed to be locked in a rivalry that would last for at least a decade on the muddy tracks of Belgium. But who could have foreseen all that he would do within five years on the road as well, this promising young cyclocrosser?

The battles in cross began to be very lopsided as Wout took dozens and dozens of second places to MVDP every season since, but Wout still rose to the occasion on the biggest stages, three years in a row he denied Van der Poel cyclocross’ Rainbow Jersey. And then he tried his hand in the classics. Third at a grueling, wet Strade Bianche right out of the gates, remember it dear Readers? The one where riders looked like literal ghosts—I am not exaggerating on that claim—from the white gravel that caked their front and backsides. Many other top tens besides as well. And then last year, we saw him with another good classics campaign mixing it up in the monuments. But the big results came that summer: the surprise-but-upon-further-review-not-surprising-at-all Belgian Time Trial victory, the sprint stage of the Dauphine, and then the big one. Remember it? How can anyone forget that epic day into Albi on the Tour last year. When the crosswinds ravaged the peloton. It was pure chaos. O! the carnage! And at the end of it many of the top sprinters in the world were still there: Sagan, Ewan, Viviani…do you remember Viviani’s face, shock and disgust, when he saw Wout Van Aert win the sprint to cap off the brutal day. But Wout crashed in the Pau Time Trial a few days later and his season ended in tears. The recovery was long, how we missed him in Cross. But at the tail end he returned, finishing fifth on his first outing, and step by step getting better each race, winning his last Cross race of the season. And it has already been talked about in the Preview how he, Wout Van Aert, reopened the cycling season with his Strade Bianche and Milan-Sanremo wins like Fausto Coppi in 1946, still those wins give me goosebumps!

And then here he was at the Tour, shagging bottles, guarding Dumoulin and Roglic, riding with Beowulf-ian strength up the steep gradients just the day before. And now today he was lights out in a sprint, when the best sprinters in the world were relatively as fresh as possible at the Tour. What can’t he do, The Swiss Army Knife? Yes, yes, a few years ago it was partisan feelings to admire him, but sometime last year, perhaps after his first Tour stage win and heartbreaking crash, he joined the Club though most didn’t realize it until today. The Club. That most elite and beloved Club I have spoken of on Stage 2 that only a handful of riders have membership in. Wout Van Aert, here is your key card that you are long overdue in receiving: you have won today and every fan is now in a better mood for the rest of the day. The race was a snoozer until you finished off the job. Your rivals on Sunweb did everything right for their highly competent and promising sprinter Cees Bol, but you could not be stopped. Ole! Ole! To see such feats of athleticism is why we tune in to such sprints. We see you, a superstar of Belgium, humbly grabbing bottles one day and making the most of your few chances the next. Wout, you are a teammate, you are a competitor, you are a champion of the highest class. You are one of those riders who brighten our day when you win, it is that simple. Bad luck kicks one of the other Club members out of Yellow: sucks, but this is a happy day, Wout won. Peter Sagan—another member of the Club—clearly and officially isn’t on top form today: doesn’t matter, Wout won. Congrats Wout, you gave us a show, you sent us home happy, but we gluttonous fans will soon be hungry and hoping for more on the flat, in the mountrains, up the steep little hills that are your bread and butter. Wout Van Aert, The Swiss Army Knife.