Fabian Cancellara on Tour of Flanders: "There is simply no argument that the strongest guy won the race"

Tadej Pogacar's Tour of Flanders victory was the highlight of the weekend. His victory led to his third conquered monument at the age of 24, and for the three-time winner of the Ronde the was no doubt that the strongest rider won the race.

"For Tadej, the harder it gets, the easier it gets. What I mean by that is, when it's a hard race, the strength of the strongest rider will show, and the others will blow earlier. The better you are, the less you have to worry. If you are tired, the others are more tired. Mentally, you need to be strong, but the harder it is for everyone, the easier it gets for you," Cancellara analyzed in a Cyclingnews column. "This Tour of Flanders was just hard all the time. It was a crazy race, right from the start - even before the start, with the terrible weather in the last days. Then you do the first 100km in two hours and everyone is on the limit when they should be letting a breakaway go."

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Whilst in the past only cobbled classics specialists and occasionally puncheurs, that has been becoming less the case over recent years. Climbing ability is slowly taking over experience, as several debutants and stage-racers are testing themselves in Flanders and finding out they can fight for a top result. None more visible than Tadej Pogacar who battled for victory last year in his debut, and this season took a very strong win after many attacks on the day's short climbs.

"...Tadej makes it harder by accelerating from the bottom to the top of every key climb. This is a Tour de France winner and he needs to use every single inch of uphill to his advantage, to turn it into a watts-per-kilo game as much as possible," Cancellara analyzes. "I definitely expected Tadej to go full gas from the bottom to the top to drop everybody on the last lap, but I didn't expect him to go straight away on the second time up. Given the situation of the race, he sort of had to."

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Whilst short and explosive climbs favour other riders more, the Slovenian has shown to have the same explosivity as the top puncheurs. On his saddle, his tactics this Sunday were to attack many different climbs with a consistent and high pace, until even the best of his rivals did not have the sharpness in their legs anymore. A tactic that worked to perfection, as the UAE Team Emirates rider simultaneously looked the strongest everytime the road went uphill.

"In the end, it comes back and Tadej still does the forcing on Koppenberg, Wout drops on Kruisberg, Mathieu drops on Kwaremont, and it's over. What more can you say? There is simply no argument that the strongest guy won the race. He is the deserving winner of the Tour of Flanders," the classics legend argues.

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