Wout van Aert may have won some of the biggest races of the season in 2021 but the Jumbo Visma rider ranks his silver medal in the Olympic road race as his best performance of the campaign.
The 27-year-old won two stages at Tirreno Adriatico and took victory in Gent-Wevelgem as well as Amstel Gold and the Belgian national championships in the first part of the year.
He then went on to win three stages at the Tour de France, including the final sprint into Paris, the TT the previous day and stage 11, which included Mont Ventoux. At the Tour of Britain he claimed four stages and the overall.
However, his silver medal in Tokyo - behind winner Richard Carapaz - was his best performance, he has said as he received the Flandrien of the year award again.
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"The best feeling I might have had was in the Tour of Britain but the Tokyo road race was my best performance. I achieved a high level in a parcours that is normally too ambitious for me," Van Aert told Het Nieuwsblad.
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"If you look at that race objectively - what I did there was punishing despite my physique. I rode the final against only top climbers.
"In recent years I have ridden some classics where I had to watch what I did in the final to have something left. In Tokyo I had a day when my strength didn't run out."
He added his biggest disappointment of the year was the Worlds, where he failed to win a medal in the road race and took silver in the TT - behind Filippo Ganna - and the Tour of Flanders.
"I had expected much more from it," he said of the Worlds. "The Tour of Flanders also belongs in this category, maybe even more than the Worlds road race.
"I had a really hard time with the Worlds TT second place, especially as the following weeks I missed out in the road race and Roubaix. If I'd been six seconds faster in the time trial the world title would have been a fact. My autumn would have had a much nicer ring to it."
