"I couldn't get over any more climbs and everything hurt" - Tudor rider details hellish reality of the Tour of Flanders

While the spotlight was on Tadej Pogacar, Mathieu van der Poel and Remco Evenepoel during the 2026 Tour of Flanders, many of the remaining spots in top-10 at a Monument were still up for grabs with the favourites up the road. Part of that battle was Tudor's Rick Pluimers who successfully tagged along with the key split on Molenberg. However De Ronde showed anything but it's kind face to the 25-year-old last weekend.

The Dutchman from Tudor Pro Cycling held firm with the best for much of the day, even cresting the Molenberg well placed. But, as so often in this race, the attrition eventually took a ruthless toll.

Speaking after the finish, visibly spent, Pluimers could not hide the suffering he's been put through to reach the finish line in Oudenaarde: "Honestly, I just want to lie here. I don’t want to get up again. I think I did everything right, but at some point I simply couldn’t keep going," he told NOS.

He pinpointed the moment his body called time, despite having raced alongside the main favourites: "I couldn’t get over the climbs anymore and everything hurt. It was a real odyssey to reach the finish, and I honestly don’t know how I did it. I wasn’t moving forward and everything hurt. Even with a tailwind I had to let the group go, so I just hope I can stand up. After 220 kilometres, I had nothing left, and from there it was just survival."

Once the decisive sectors began, the race turned into a pure test of endurance. Pluimers finished 66th, almost nine minutes down on the winner, after a second half of the race he summed up bluntly: "From the Kwaremont on, it was purgatory. It’s a shame."

The suffering wasn’t only physical. There were tense moments after his teammate Matteo Trentin crashed out with a broken collarbone: "Matteo was still riding well, but then he crashed. Above all, I hope he’s okay, but right now I can’t process it. At one point, I started seeing stars."

After one of the toughest races on the calendar, recovery becomes the only priority. Pluimers himself laid out a simple plan for the next day: "I hope I can sleep, then sleep a bit more. I’ll wake up, make myself a coffee, eat a good sandwich, and spend the whole day on the sofa watching it all back."

His account gives voice to an often unseen reality: the rider not contesting the win, yet fighting an equally demanding battle against the physical limit in one of the hardest races in the world.