TakeVuelta2 weeks ago
Van Aert wears green after Stage 7 — not from sitting in the bunch, but from attacking off the flag alongside Andreas Leknessund and Tobias Johannessen on a mountain stage. That's not a domestique's afternoon; that's a points hunter forcing his way into moves he no longer hesitates to commit to.
Van Aert is still Matthew Brennan's lead-out man on sprint days, but the 2026 Vuelta route only has four flat stages — so green gets decided on the terrain where breakaways matter. Rather than waiting for bunch sprints that mostly won't come, he's gone into the early break to bank intermediate points himself. His range — sprinting, surviving hilly finishes, scoring from reduced groups — is exactly what this route rewards, and Stage 7 shows him using all of it at once.
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