This piece will not address whether or not Wout should start the race, but will assume he does. Therefore, I will pinpoint what his goals should be, and his prospects for achieving those goals are.
I see no reason for Wout to not prioritize a General Classification bid in the Giro. To be completely frank, I have little idea whether he can win the race, or would barely hang on for a 12th-place finish. The point is that it looks like one of the softest Grand Tour fields and parcours he will ever get a shot at, and he has yet to try. I embrace the motto that you never know if you do not try. What if he is really a top 10 GC rider who could pick off a weak Grand Tour? It would be a crime to not find out, as Grand Tour victories are the most prestigious titles in the sport, with the Giro being clearly ahead of the Vuelta for second-place.
I am certain with the leaked rosters for Jumbo’s 2024 Giro squad coming out, they do not mind sacrificing their streak of Grand Tour victories to give their young GC hopefuls (and Wout) some experience and ensure that the Tour and Vuelta are locked down with Vingegaard and Kuss. So Wout’s bid for GC glory is a low-risk, high-reward strategy for the team. He can try and if he utterly fails, they have other options to top 5 or even podium the Giro, and then he can go stage-hunting later in the race anyway.
He, like Tadej Pogacar, is at a crossroads in his career, for slightly different reasons. Having had a down year in 2023, the cycling fan still is not quite sure what Wout is capable of. It seems like he is so good at so many things, it takes away from his ability to dominate in any one aspect of bike racing.
He had a lot of freedom on a variety of stages in this year’s Tour de France, for example, but always came up short. The stage (15) he lost to Wout Poels sticks out to me as a massive tactical and physical failing on his part. He wasted far too much energy demonstrating his strength and trying to overpower his breakaway companions, but in the end he was defeated by over two minutes, by an inferior rider, on a climb not difficult to separate Pogi and Jonas behind by a single second.
I think for the most part his form, particularly his climbing form, was lacking this year. Would he have been able to defeat Matthieu van der Poel and Pogi in the Ronde van Vlaanderen anyway? Probably not. But he would have snagged a few Tour stages at least.
It is also possible he would have won Paris-Roubaix, a race that probably suits him the best of the Monuments, if not for a disastrously-timed flat tire.
What I am arguing is that he did not have that bad of a year; rather, it seems that the best riders upped their level and he probably dipped a tiny bit. Thus, he was essentially rendered unable to compete for victory at the biggest races.
But Wout has started a lot of Monuments in his career as a favorite and only ever snagged Milano-Sanremo once. 2023 was the year after which most cycling commentators wrote off Wout as Mr. Consistent, Mr. Second Place, Master of None, and so on.
I am not so sure he is though. He is no Pogacar who can win RVV and the Tour in the same year, but I think the pressure from Jumbo-Visma to do everything well is hurting his chances of specializing and actually winning a more narrow range of big races, rather always getting second or third.
So Wout should try to go all-in on GC at the 2024 Giro. That will require losing weight and probably intentionally reducing sprint ability in favor of longer and repeated Alpine efforts. He can still probably win some stages and get bonus seconds with his sprint on top of soft finishing climbs over the rest of the GC riders. He will take time in the time trials unless Remco shows up or Pogacar brings Tour de France form. And he can sit in the wheels on the monster mountain days and limit his losses. This is essentially the Pogi-2023 Tour-Lite strategy with a much larger advantage (as opposed to disadvantage) in the TTs and a higher potential to lose massive time on a mountain.
The climbing demonstrations he has exhibited, when on form, are Grand Tour GC quality. 2021 Tirreno-Adriatico Prati di Tivo and Tour de France double Mont Ventoux are the mountain stages of note which made me scratch my head. A bunch sprinter/TT rouleur/domestique/cobbler should not be able to do that. So his top level, on normal mountains, is generally higher than anyone on INEOS Grenadiers, for example. He is not going to go up Ventoux as fast as Vingegaard if both are equally fresh, for example, but he might not be as far behind as we initially thought.
The main question is whether he can repeat those performances in the second and third week of a Grand Tour enough to keep his losses under control. The question remains to be answered, but he will sure have a better shot if he is not wasting energy sprinting in the bunch, going in breakaways, and domestiquing for Jonas.
Should Wout van Aert finally start the Giro d’Italia in 2024, he should eschew all options in favor of a General Classification challenge. There is nothing to lose, and he might not ever get the same opportunity to try.
Puncheur 
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