"Classics are hard all day, which suits me": Picnic's breakaway specialist will try his luck at the Tour of Flanders

Frank van den Broek already made a name for himself in the peloton as a talented climber, and a hard-to-get-rid-of breakaway comrade when the crunch time comes. However for 2026, his Team Picnic PostNL bosses have prepared a meticulous spring programme, centered around the mighty Tour of Flanders.

"I want to focus a bit more on the spring classics this year. It's a challenging thing to do," he told De Grote Plaat. Not only the Flemish Monument is on Van der Broek's preliminary calendar though, as a participation at the biggest home race, the Amstel Gold Race, is also planned.

And although Van der Broek's excitement about this calendar is not a secret, the somewhat surprising idea came from his managers instead: "I immediately got butterflies in my stomach. It really came from the team. Around the end of November, the team leaders met and put together a general plan. That plan was brought to the attention of the team management."

Van den Broek has participated in the Tour of Flanders before in 2024. But as he spent a gruelling day in the breakaway of the Volta NXT Classic day earlier, not much was left in the tank for his Flanders debut. Therefore, then 23-year-old Dutchman only saw the finishline as a spectator. For 2026, the goal goes beyond "just getting the feel of the race" as two years prior.

So while the culmination of the first third of the year is different from last year, the opening of the season is going to be familiar for Van den Broek. It's bound to be either the Tour of Oman (like in 2024), or the AlUla Tour (like in 2025), he reveals.

While he might lin up as one of the team leaders for an overall result in Middle East, Van den Broek points out that the hard Classics fit his profile much better than the "hockey-stick" profile stages often presented at the start of the year. "Races like AlUla or Oman at the beginning of the year are already very fast. But that's often just one effort, while in the classics you ride hard all day. That suits me. And it's also good to maintain the excitement and motivation."

The outcome of his second start in Flanders is written in the stars, but were it to go perfectly, the 2026 spring could be a turning point in the career of Van den Broek as the 25-year-old could discover a completely new dimension of his racing potential.

"You just have to try everything," he declares with spark in his eye. The fearless style of racing is after all what suits the breakaway specialist the best. That quality of his was put in the spotlight during the 2024 Tour, but Van den Broek doesn't look at the competition twice before making his move: "Last year I also made a move in the Amstel Gold Race. It's not a matter of one thing or another; you can play around with that. Of course, I'm not going to ride all the spring classics now."