Anthony Tan
He’s won three from three this season and the last four Monuments. Yet such is the bar he sets for himself, Tadej Pogačar described his Sunday in Flanders as “close to perfection”.
The only time all four* pre-race favourites – Tadej Pogačar, Mathieu van der Poel, Wout van Aert and Mads Pedersen – met prior to De Ronde was Milan-San Remo.
Pogačar won, of course, and van der Poel, van Aert and Pedersen was eighth, third and fourth, respectively.
But this year’s M-SR was on March 21 and the 110th edition of the Ronde van Vlaanderen was April 5; a lot can change in 15 days.
For a start van Aert, the Team Visma | Lease a Bike leader, got better.
In between M-SR and RVV he contested two races, and four days prior to RVV he came 100 metres short of winning a hard-as-hell edition of Dwars door Vlaanderen, second only to a rampant Filippo Ganna of Ineos Grenadiers.
As far as the Spring Classics were concerned, it was the best he looked since returning from a season-ending crash on Stage 16 of the 2024 Vuelta a España.
Alpecin-Premier Tech’s van der Poel also raced twice between M-SR and RVV, and won the E3 Saxo Classic on March 27 with a Pogačar-style solo attack 42km from the finish in Harelbeke.
So it was thought he would be as good, if not a little better, in De Ronde, and was gunning for a record fourth title in Oudenaarde.
Out of the Big Four the form of Pedersen, runner-up to Tornado Tadej at the 2025 Ronde van Vlaanderen, was perhaps the least certain.
In his first race outing of 2026, the Great Dane from Lidl-Trek broke his left wrist and right collarbone in a high-speed crash during Stage 1 of the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana.
That he managed to come back and finish fourth at M-SR was borderline miraculous. Like WVA and MVDP he rode two one-day races prior to Sunday’s RVV and enjoyed two top-10s; was he saving himself for the biggest race of the year in Belgium?
When I listed the pre-race favourites, why did I put an asterisk after “four”?
Because on April Fool’s, the same day Ganna pipped van Aert to win Dwars door Vlaanderen, Remco Evenepoel, Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe’s leader for the Tour de France, decided, ostensibly on a whim, he would give arguably the hardest Monument in professional cycling a crack.
The 26-year-old had never ridden De Ronde before.
In fact, since turning pro in 2019 he’d only ridden two Monuments: Liège-Bastogne-Liège and Il Lombardia, the former he’d won twice (2022, ‘23) and his best result in the latter was last year, where he finished second to that pesky Pog in Bergamo last October.
I say ostensibly because the day before the Tour of Flanders he cheekily revealed it was always on his program; just for laughs he decided to keep it a secret!
So it was now The Big Five.
Out of this quintet of cycling beasts only Evenepoel had not ridden La Classicissima, Milan-San Remo, but the first Monument of the season is so wildly different to the second: the finale in the former is invariably concentrated in the last 30 kilometres, from the base of the Cipressa to the Poggio and then, as it turned out this year, a sprint in Sanremo; in contrast, the finale of De Ronde can start from as far out as 100km to go.
It didn’t use to be the case – the third ascension of the Oude Kwaremont (its crest coming after 223.5km) followed by the Paterberg (km 227) was where the smackdown used to happen.
But in recent years riders like van der Poel and particularly Pogačar have flipped what was previously thought possible on its head.
On Sunday, over 278.2 kilometres, 16 climbs, or hellingen, had to be traversed. All up, 2,258 metres of vertical climbing. All bar three hellingen were in the final 105km, equating to one climb every 8km or so.
Pogačar’s seven-man UAE Team Emirates posse decided to go hard and go early on the Molenberg, the seventh of 16 hellingen, its summit a massive 104km from the finish in Oudenaarde.
“He couldn’t be going this early, could he?” asked SBS TV commentator, Matthew Keenan.
His co-commentators, David McKenzie and Gracie Elvin, didn’t immediately answer.
With The Pog, you never quite know.
The infernal pace set by UAE Team Emirates had an unintended consequence, however.
Pogačar soon found himself with just one team-mate – Florian Vermeersch.
Out of the Big Five in this front group of 17, behind the inexorably diminishing early break, only Evenepoel had two team-mates. Van Aert had one. Pedersen and MVDP were mate-less – at least until this group caught the early break 78km from the line, when Silvan Dillier was reunited with his leader.
Three clicks later, however, at the behest of The Pog on Berg Ten Houte, the ninth of 16 hellingen, Dillier was dropped.
“He jumps from the front!” exclaims McKenzie as Pogačar, at the top of the second time up the Oude Kwaremont (climb 10/16), 55km from home, turns it into a game of five. “It’s just the acceleration, and the ability of The Pog, to keep on increasing.”
“I was in good position but I got blocked by some riders,” van der Poel later said, “so I had to come all the way from the back. It cost me a big effort to come back to the wheel of Tadej.”
Added Evenepoel: “You have to know that, (from) the second time (up the) Kwaremont there was a tailwind on all the climbs, so I think that made it really hard. If it were a headwind it would be a different story.”
By the crest of the Paterberg (climb 11/16, 51km to go), with only van der Poel able to hang on, Pogačar had made it a two-horse race.
McKenzie: “That’s one of Pog’s biggest strengths. He’s got the ability to recover quicker than anyone else.”
Debutant Evenepoel was less than 10 seconds in arrears and wasn’t giving up. The rainbow-bedecked Pog appeared more concerned with the 2022 world road champion than MVDP, the rainbow jersey from 2023, even though on paper, the latter was fastest finisher.
“I definitely didn’t want Remco to come back,” Pogačar admitted afterwards. “If you give him a second chance, you can regret it later. So I was really trying to break that elastic.”
“He told me it was really his goal to not let me come back,” confirmed Evenepoel.
And so, on the third and final time up the Kwaremont, with the aforementioned goal accomplished, it was time to rid himself of van der Poel. The same seated acceleration we’ve now become so familiar to seeing saw Pogačar jettison his remaining companion.
“Ach, it’s not like I pulled like a madman,” responded van der Poel, asked if, in retrospect, he cooperated too much.
“Sometimes, it’s better to pull a little bit with your legs, so I was happy with the situation. I always go as hard as I can for myself, and I did the same again today. In the end, it’s very simple – he was stronger,” he said with a wry smile.
Race numbers 1, 11 and 111 finished first, second and third. Van Aert and Pedersen came home fourth and fifth, 2’04 and 2’48 behind Pogačar.
The next best? 2021 Milan-San Remo champion Jasper Stuyven, the Soudal Quick-Step rider a sizeable 4’28 in arrears.
Ones and twos all the way to Oliver Naesen (Decathlon CMA CGM Team) who won the sprint for thirteenth place.
Cackled The Pog with his trademark smile, “Today was bananas… I would say all the men put their balls on the table and raced with their hearts and left it all on the road.”
“It’s never perfect, but close to perfection. I was always protected, always in good position. So, I’m super-happy how the day went.”
If, this coming Sunday, he wins Paris-Roubaix, he will have won all five Monuments in succession. But for him, only if he wins all five in a season will it count as perfection.
Anthony Tan
Anthony Tan - One of Bicycling Australia’s longest-serving columnists, ‘Tan Man’ has a deep passion for the sport and is a natural communicator.
