Mud, rain, wind, cobblestones… There are those who do cyclo-cross and those who don’t. And, in this little game, especially with the absences of Wout Van Aert and Tadej Pogacar, Mathieu Van der Poel is the strongest. The Dutchman, world champion, won the Tour of Flanders for the third time, by attacking where everyone, or almost everyone, dismounted.
In the Koppenberg, around fifty kilometers from the finish, the Alpecin-Deceuninck rider, ass screwed on the saddle, launched an attack at the moment when his adversaries (apart from Matteo Jorgenson and Mads Pedersen) had to come down from their mount, faced with the demands of the climb, the slippery cobblestones and the mud that sticks to the tubulars.
Five monuments for VDP
Left alone, Mathieu Van der Poel was never seen again by the competition. And, at the cost of a remarkable solo effort, notably in Old Kwaremont and Paterberg, the grandson of Raymond Poulidor raised his arms in Oudenaarde with more than a minute ahead of Luca Mozzato and Nils Politt, third. after Michael Matthews was decommissioned.
After his successes on the Ronde in 2020 and 2022, Mathieu Van der Poel joined Achiel Buysse, Fiorenzo Magni, Eric Leman, Johan Museeuw, Tom Boonen and Fabio Cancellara among the triple winners of the Flemish classic. With the prospect of aiming for an unprecedented quadruplet by 2025. With three Ronde, a Paris-Roubaix and a Milan-Sanremo, VDP also equaled Tadej Pogacar, winner of five Monuments, the only two active riders to have won so many.