Van Aert entered Wednesday holding the lead in the Tour de France, but said stage 5 was "a bad day" for Jumbo Visma.

In Wednesday's dramatic race across the cobblestones of northern France, amid a whirlwind of dust, crashes, and confusion, Van Aert himself crashed once, nearly collided with a DSM team car, and finished the race with the wrong idea that he was about to lose his yellow.

But even if he had held on to the lead, the experience never seemed far from Van Aert's perfect solo attack, which had earned him a stage win to Calais just 24 hours earlier.

But while the Belgian praised his team's strength in defending his yellow and Jonas Vingegaard's chances in the GC fight, Van Aert recognized that stage 5 was a very complicated day for Jumbo Visma. Team leader Primoš Roglic also pulled away from his rivals, a result that was very different from the development Jumbo-Visma had hoped for.

"We had big plans for today, but it ended up like this.

"As a group we were strong, but we couldn't put pressure on our rivals. It's a shame we couldn't do more than chase them down at the end."

"Jonas had a mechanical problem and we lost Primosch because of the time it took to change the car. I didn't know what happened to Primosch, but so many things happened in 15 minutes that it was difficult to grasp the whole picture."

The fog was so thick in the Tour's cobblestone battle on Wednesday that Van Aat said he did not know he was in the process of defending the yellow jersey and "that was not the purpose of the chase."

"Midway through the stage, when I crashed, I thought for sure I was going to lose it.

"So it was easy to fully commit to teamwork. I had to try to bring [Tadei] Pogachar [UAE Emirates] back, but there was no clear prospect. So I stayed with Jonas to try to minimize the gap."

Aside from token cooperation from the Ineos Grenadiers, the bulk of the work to track down the Slovenians was done by Jumbo-Visma. VanArt emphasized the depth of his team's layers, even if he was in a damage limitation mode rather than a pain-in-the-ass.

"I think everybody liked yesterday [stage 4] better, but you have to get over days like today. But days like today you have to get over it, we stayed in good shape for Jonas on GC and I'm proud of everyone who did everything they could to catch up. We will continue to fight."

Van Aert, who appeared to be largely unaffected physically after crashing in the corner, said, "I'm not going back to fighting. Getting back into the fight was harder mentally than physically. And given his somewhat disoriented state after the crash, the near miss with the rear bumper of the DSM team car that braked suddenly was an accident waiting to happen.

"The feeling was fine, but it was difficult to get back into the mix and fight for position again.

"Then in the DSM car, I was still a little confused after the first crash, so I was late braking and couldn't avoid hitting my teammate Steven Kruisbike. I was a little dizzy, overwhelmed, and just as I was talking to Steven, the DSM braked hard right in front of me. It was very scary. Just a few more centimeters and I could have done some serious damage."

It was the first time Van Aert had ridden a cobbled stage in the Tour de France, and "a lot of riders told me it couldn't be compared to the classics.

"In fact, in the beginning I didn't really like riding at the front of the bunch. The cobblestones gave people hope, but then we started going through villages and the roads were much narrower and there were all kinds of things on the road. I didn't like it there, and I didn't want to take any risks."

Just as he decided to move up, he fell.

"At that point I let the other riders down and instead of getting a good position on the cobbles, I ended up behind. From then on it was a battle with myself all day long."

"There were no cars or motos in front of me, so I felt like I was so far back. But I got information over the radio and knew I had options to keep fighting"

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And after this most decisive stage of the 2022 Tour de France was over, Van Aat said, "It was a really fast stage."

He assured that the GC battle was far from over for either of the two leaders vying for yellow. It also goes without saying that he remains in the lead in the points standings.

"Of course, Primosch is a little further back, and a minute or two might seem big. We need to make sure Primosh is okay first." He said."

"But today we proved that we have two of the strongest riders in the Tour de France on our team, and we will have to see what happens.

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