Wout van Aert’s turbulent classics campaign almost went up in smoke this afternoon, when the Belgian star narrowly avoided crashing due to a suspected puncture while riding at speed through the iconic Arenberg Forest during a Paris-Roubaix recon.
The Visma-Lease a Bike leader, who was being filmed by Flemish broadcaster VTM as he tested himself ahead on the Paris-Roubaix route ahead of his attempt to finally win the Hell of the North on Sunday, had just entered the race’s most infamous stretch of cobbles when he lost control of his bike and was forced to unclip.
Suffering what Het Laatste Nieuws reported to be a flat front tyre, Van Aert attempted to put his foot down before veering dramatically across the road, using all his world title-winning cyclocross skills to pull off a spectacular, if rather scary, save.
The 30-year-old eventually ended up on the tarmacked section to the side of the Trouée d’Arenberg’s notorious cobbles, a section of the route that will be barriered off during the weekend’s races, before steadying himself.
Further footage showed Van Aert coming to a halt with a clear front puncture, stopping at his team support vehicle, before discussing tyre pressure with his mechanic.
Posting his 130km ride on Strava this afternoon, Van Aert appeared to reference his shocking, high-speed near miss in the Arenberg, captioning his post: “You have to get through the forest, right?”
According to Het Laatste Nieuws, that Arenberg close call marked the second time Van Aert had punctured during today’s reconnaissance ride of Paris-Roubaix’s decisive cobbled sectors with his Visma-Lease a Bike teammates.
It has also been reported in the Belgian press that Van Aert was using the recon ride to test out Gravaa’s groundbreaking tyre pressure adjustment system.
The self-inflating and deflating tyre technology, which allows you to adjust and monitor tyre pressure while riding via a pump that’s integrated into the hubs and using buttons on your handlebars, was first used by Visma-Lease a Bike during the 2023 classics season.
Dylan van Baarle and Christophe Laporte raced with Gravaa’s KAPS (kinetic air pressure system) technology at the 2023 Paris-Roubaix, though Van Aert himself opted out. After a brief period of inaction in the peloton, an updated version of the system was used by Marianne Vos as she secured the 14th rainbow jersey of her career at the UCI gravel world championships last October.
Vos and Pauline Ferrand-Prévot both took advantage of the tech at the Tour of Flanders last weekend, the French rider sprinting to a career-high second-place at the Ronde behind world champion Lotte Kopecky.
And in March, Visma-Lease a Bike’s 19-year-old British sensation Matty Brennan won the GP Denain, which finishes just five miles south of the Arenberg Forest, utilising the tyre pressure system.
The benefits of using the Gravaa system at a race like Paris-Roubaix, where 55km of the 259km route feature rough, jagged cobblestones, are obvious, enabling riders to inflate and deflate their tyres as they switch between road surfaces, increasing comfort and handling on the pavé while retaining speed on the asphalt.
In theory, anyway, having such a level of control over your tyre pressure should also lead to fewer punctures – though as Van Aert discovered in the Arenberg Forest this afternoon, you can never rule anything out in cycling.
Wout Van Aert s’est fait une belle frayeur dans la Trouée d’Arenberg ce jeudi, en marge de sa reconnaissance de #ParisRoubaix. 📹HLNpic.twitter.com/Q51sU6C2D9
— Le Gruppetto (@LeGruppetto) April 10, 2025
Arenberg scares aside, it’s certainly been a tricky classics season so far for Van Aert. After a 2024 campaign marred by crashes and injury, the Visma-Lease a Bike leader started the year in consistent if somewhat underwhelming fashion, at least compared to the immediate successes of his big one-day rivals, Mathieu van der Poel and Tadej Pogačar.
However, an embarrassing defeat at last week’s Dwars door Vlaanderen, which saw Van Aert surprisingly outsprinted by Nielson Powless, despite his Visma team outnumbering the American EF-EasyPost rider three-to-one in the winning move, ushered in a gruelling post-mortem in the Belgian cycling press, as doubts bubbled to the surface over whether the 30-year-old will ever win the cobbled monuments that appeared a few short years ago to be his destiny.
That critical, unwavering focus on their biggest one-day star from the Flemish media seems to be increasingly playing on Van Aert’s mind, his defeat to Powless in Waregem partially a result of his desire to make a ‘statement’ ahead of the Tour of Flanders.
A more promising, spirited, and attacking display at the Ronde, which nevertheless saw him finish fourth behind the three classics riders who have eclipsed him, Pogačar, Van der Poel, and Mads Pedersen, has gone some way to easing the pressure ahead of Paris-Roubaix, the biggest day of Van Aert’s entire season.
Will his near miss in the Arenberg be the only time Van Aert slips up on the Paris-Roubaix cobbles this week?
15 thoughts on “Wout van Aert almost crashes in Arenberg Forest during Paris-Roubaix recon due to suspected puncture while using self-inflating tyre pressure system”
Looks like he’s risking
Looks like he’s risking riding without inserts. Didn’t Fred Wright come a cropper in the Arenburg for the same reason?
lesterama wrote:
Would the Gravaa system work with inserts? I don’t know technical ins and outs of the system but at a guess I would think that the amount of valve needed inside the rim to keep inflating and deflating the tyre might preclude having an insert?
It should be fine if they
It should be fine if they were using the Vittoria Air Liner system as I believe they are still sponsored by Vittoria.
You can just cut that foam to shape for anything weird. I recently did it for a friend who had airtags attached to his tubeless valves in the rim
I see. Supplementary question
I see. Supplementary question as you clearly know more about it than I do, how do foam inserts work with different pressures, e.g. if they drop the pressure to 60 psi for the cobbles and then ramp it up to 100 psi for the tarmac, why doesn’t what fits at 60 psi rattle around inside the tyre at 100 psi (sorry if this is a stupid question, I have no experience of using inserts).
Inserts are always smaller
Inserts are always smaller than the tyre regardless of pressure – they have to be so you can get the tyre on and off relatively easily. So they always “rattle” around, but since they are made of foam and bouncing mostly against rubber or the rim channel you dont notice.
A friend told me that Gravaa
A friend told me that Gravaa doesn’t work with inserts. Visma actually glued their tubeless tyres on to avoid tyre detachments! Sounds like a massive faff, but it was clearly worth it for Ferrand-Prevot’s win.
So there’s electronics and
So there’s electronics and computers and motors for gear changes and pumping up or deflating tyres. Why not just motorise the whole bike and be done with it?
Aluminium can wrote:
Because that would be in contravention of UCI Technical Regulation, specifically 1.3.010.
just to be clear – do we know
just to be clear – do we know for sure that the humpy-pumpy system was to blame? Lucky he was on his own, imagine the carnage if he’d been in the peloton
We don’t, and I’m sure Gravaa
We don’t, and I’m sure Gravaa wouldn’t want us to know if it was their system. Looks like a front puncture. I’m surprised (actually, I’m not) that the UCI haven’t mandated inserts or tubulars for P-R.
lesterama wrote:
Tubeless less likely to puncture than tubulars, and less likely to have catastrophic effects when they do (slow deflation rather than bang), surely?
A tubular with sealant is
A tubular with sealant is arguably the safest option.
The key win for tubs is that you can still ride them when the air goes suddenly. The shape of the rim means you don’t get those scary squirmy unrideable sensations. That’s why most people still use them on indoor tracks and for CX. And that’s why they hung around in the cobbled classics the longest (usually with sealant added); not just for the initial loss of pressure, but so riders could keep on rolling until they got a spare wheel.
I’ve not punctured on inserts, but would hope they’d be almost as rideable deflated as tubs. If WVA had had inserts or tubs yesterday, that puncture would’ve been a non-incident. If similar happens this weekend, it could be nasty.
I’m not advocating a return to tubs. I just think racing serious cobbles like the Arenburg without inserts is a bit crazy: low risk, high consequence.
Are inserts UCI road legal?
Are inserts UCI road legal?
Great question! They are for
Great question! They are for MTB. Not sure for road.
Definitely legal and a number
Definitely legal and a number of teams have used them, I remember an interview with IPT’s chief technician a couple of years back where he revealed that team leaders weren’t using inserts because they were prioritised by the team car for servicing if necessary but the domestiques were using them so that they could keep running for longer in the event of a puncture until service could get to them.