Hat-trick in hell! Mathieu van der Poel sees off Tadej Pogacar's challenge to complete historic Paris-Roubaix threepeat

i willfully CHOOSE to believe in your theory about greatness being sharpened and driven by greatness, because in my ideal world that’s how i’d wish it to be.
in this case, with mathieu in particular, i think the presence of first wout then tadej absolutely drives and consumes him to some degree. he’s a guy who admittedly gets BORED. and when mathieu gets bored he just goes and does something else. he’s very clear about the fact there are a BUNCH of things he just doesn’t really care about, and i think anyone who follows him has a sense that MVDP is here for a GOOD TIME, not a LONG TIME. my hope is that tadej’s greatness will keep mathieu focused and hungry. very sadly, wout no longer fills that role. he may again and i hope he does, but their career trajectories are going in different directions and have been for a few years now. i will be extremely sad for the truly SPECTACULAR van aert if his line MSR win is the only monument trophy on his mantle. at very least i want ONE roubaix cobblestone sitting next to it. he deserves to tell the story when the grandkids ask “why is there a big rock sitting up there, papa?”

Wout Van Aert won a Monument (San Remo, 2020), so he wouldn't be in that article. He might be in an article of riders like Sagan who were truly exceptional and won fewer monuments that expected.

As for these two, they've won the last 7 monuments, 10 of the last 12, 15 of the last 20. Merckx and de Vlaeminck weren't that dominant in their era. It really is special the way these two race with such admiration for each other along the way. Rivals, not enemies.

True, sorry