Dylan van Baarle has faced a fresh injury setback at the 2025 Tour Down Under, breaking his collarbone during the closing kilometres of the opening stage.
The Dutch allrounder will not be able to start the race on stage 2, his Visma-Lease a Bike team reported later via X.
Van Baarle had two seasons to forget since his victory in Paris-Roubaix in 2022 and returned to the Tour Down Under for the third time looking to start a much better year.
However, his latest in a series of bad crashes will now see him out of racing in the short-term, and may affect at least the early part of his Classics program this spring where he is due to play a key role for Visma alongside Wout van Aert.
"I want to come out of this race better than I came in, and to get some race rhythm again because last year I didn't really have many race opportunities," Van Baarle told Cyclingnews ahead of the opening stage.
"It's a new year, so we're gonna go with full motivation to make it a good year again."
To ward off the crash demons, the 32-year-old had been wearing what he hoped will be a lucky charm bracelet - his partner, Olympic champion Pauline Ferrand-Prévot has a matching one. However, it could not prevent his latest crash setback.
Van Baarle's previous troubles started with a crash during the E3 Saxo Classic in 2023 that knocked him out of the Tour of Flanders. Then, during his Paris-Roubaix title defence, he broke bones in his hand and shoulder and had to have cuts to his face glued back together.
In 2024, his incidents may have been overshadowed by the terrible wrecks of Wout van Aert and Jonas Vingegaard, but an illness and two crashes left him sitting out most of the season. He only raced for 20 days in 2024.
During the Critérium du Dauphine, Van Baarle was involved in a massive crash on slick, wet roads, breaking his collarbone. He returned in time to represent his country at the Paris Olympics, but then, on stage 2 of the Vuelta a España, misfortune struck again. A slow-speed crash in a feed zone left him with two fractures to his pubic bone.
"I think the last crash was quite a tough one to swallow, especially how it happened, and then the whole rehab again afterwards. That was quite tough," Van Baarle said before the stage.
"I've had quite some setbacks last year, but I overcame them, and we go with full motivation again to the new season."
Van Baarle's bad luck coincided with a switch from Ineos Grenadiers to Visma-Lease a Bike that came after his Paris-Roubaix win and second place in the Tour of Flanders. He is expected to be a dual leader with Van Aert in the Classics.
Visma-Lease a Bike have begun to give riders specialised training to improve their attention during races in addition to other measures to try to reverse the riders' misfortunes.
"We had some testing in the December camp, and they're gonna look at the results and see which guys can improve on what side. It's quite interesting. We are trying to limit the crashes as much as possible, which is hard to do in our sport," Van Baarle said before stage 1.
"But, if you focus more on yourself, then it will also help to prevent crashes, of course. And maybe other teams will also start to do it and will make the peloton a bit safer."
Safety has been a major issue in the peloton, and in addition to rules such as the new yellow card system, the UCI is considering limiting gears to help bring the speeds down in the peloton.
Van Baarle thinks the gear restrictions might work, too.
"Some guys are riding with the 58 or 60 [tooth chainrings] in the bunch. That's quite big, but mainly [we need] to have as safe as possible courses, because sometimes you come on the circuit or come through towns with obstacles, and it feels more like Mario Kart than racing. So that's step one, to have a safe course and then we can have a look to what we also can do as riders.
"The whole level of the bunch is getting higher and higher, and it's only good for the sport, but now it's up to us to adjust to that."
