THE WOUT VAN AERT SHOW

Presented like the rock star he is in front of thousands of fawning, screaming fans in the Belgian town of Binche ahead of stage six, it was hard not to shake the feeling that it was Wout van Aert who was the greatest of all time on the stage. But it was in fact the man he was stood next to that has his name etched into the annals of cycling history with that title – Eddy Merckx.

For, however highly we rated van Aert before this edition of the Tour de France, we are being forced to upgrade the ratings and delve into the book of superlatives to laud the Jumbo-Visma man even more after an opening nine days that Netflix could buy the rights to and name ‘The Wout van Aert Show, in association with dominance, bravado and panache’.

Following three successive second places, the Belgian attacked the climbers and denied the GC men to win both stages four and eight, and he also went into a barely believable three-man break on the sixth stage