Bernard Van Aert's Reason For Preparation At The Road Race Number Ahead Of The 2024 Paris Olympics

JAKARTA - Bernard van Aert will make a number of preparations in the road race number, although later at the Paris 2024 Olympics Bernard will compete in the track number. Bernard passed the qualifying for the men's Omnium number, thanks to his positive record at the Asian Track Championship and UCI Track Nations Cup.

So that he will be the only Southeast Asian cycling athlete who will appear in the men's Omnion number. Bicycle racing coach Dadang Haries Poernomo explained the reason why his athletes took preparations in the road race number.

Bernard is one of the athletes who is included in the track endurance category, which on average is all basically road race racers. In fact, almost 50 percent of the athletes who took part in the omnium number participated in the big event tour and some even took part in the Tour of de Switzerland, some participated in the Tour de France," Dadang said as quoted by ANTARA, Tuesday, June 18.

"Well, Bernard's level has not yet reached there. That's why I didn't give Bernard a tour event, but a one day race event. So there is still continuity or alignment with the track. So it is impossible to follow the track number continuously because the track number is not like the road race. So we fill it with more road race numbers," he added.

Regarding Bernard's readiness, Dadang said his athletes had reached a satisfactory stage to reach their peak at the upcoming Olympics.

"Currently it has reached 90 percent. It's only 10 percent left to improve its performance. I think with one and a half months, there are more competitions to penetrate the performance you expect, only 0.2 percent left," said Dadang.

Dadang then explained the preparations that Bernard will undergo for the Olympics which will take place in the next two months.

For this week Bernard will take part in the road race championship in Batam, which is one of the numbers that also enter UCI points and that must be followed by all national athletes. It will also enter the cumulative points for the next Olympics. That's why before Bernard leaves for the Alicante basecamp in Spain, he will join the National Championship first," said Dadang.

After that Bernard will return to Jakarta to then go back to Italy to take part in training for a week. After coming from Italy, the 27-year-old athlete will fly to Alicante, Spain, to participate in three road race events.