Mathieu van der Poel may match the likes of Merckx, Boonen and Sagan in reaching historic achievement if he wins Tour of Flanders
CyclingFriday, 29 March 2024 at 10:54
After Wout van Aert was severely injured and Mads Pedersen is in doubt to start the Tour of Flanders, Mathieu van der Poel's life became much less complicated for the second monument of the season. He is the main favourite to take the win, and he can achieve an interesting goal which very few have in history.
The Alpecin-Deceuninck rider won the E3 Saxo Classic after a terrific performance with attacks from very far away, eventually soloing to the win. In Flanders, a tougher race, a similar scenario is expected with only the likes of Matteo Jorgenson or Pedersen - if he recovers - being at a similar level.
If van der Poel wins, he will also be only the sixth rider in the history of the men's side of the sport to win with the rainbow jersey. Although often World Champions are classics specialists, this has actually only been achieved by five riders in the past.
They were Louison Bobet in 1955, Rik van Looy in 1962, Eddy Merckx in 1975, Tom Boonen in 2006 and most recently Peter Sagan in 2016. Van der Poel has good chances of adding his name onto this list as the winner of the 2024 edition.
Read also
claps 0visitors 0
Just in
Popular news
Jury & Fines Tour de France 2025 | Update Stage 6
Jul 10, 19:15
5
Latest comments
- I think he's playing his cards close to his chest he know the real fight is in a couple of weeks timeslappers6611-07-2025
- Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe are also building up Lipowitz and Pellizzari, who would probably share leadership with Evenepoel
Llywelynglyndwr11-07-2025 - I don't watch Pogacar as strong as last year. He is racing in suspiciously conservative mode. I don't know if it's because his shape isn't perfect or because he's decided to race La Vuelta (then he doesn't want to overdo). A shame, I like the crazy pogacar, not this conservative version.
maria2024202411-07-2025 - they didn't pull the peloton, they were stopping the peloton (stopping Visma, that didn't want to let the breakaway go away).maria2024202411-07-2025
- tadej didn't know the real time gap with Mathieu. He watched the others accelerate and sprint to not lose time. As usual, the info-strategies work better in Visma than in UAE. Visma almost obtain its objective: Tadej in yellow. 1 second.maria2024202411-07-2025
- That looks like a pope hat with a white cross. Their helmets still look funny to me
KerisVroom11-07-2025 - Unfortunately, with the yellow jersey, he has less time for recovery.KerisVroom11-07-2025
- Rather avoid that angle on it ... with Jonas's extraordinary explosivity since the Dauphine, and Jorgenson's disappointing performance in the time trial, people could just as well see the time trial as a rare lapse in Visma's nutrition.Hill3311-07-2025
- While Visma wants him in the yellow to allow lesser time to rest, it is also strange that Pogi would sprint to the line ahead of everybody instead of just following the rivals wheel. Also they were pulling the peloton, they could have given them more minutes, Simon is not a challenger here, he is 14 minutes behind. So these are just mind games. Pogi wanted the stage win and the yellow but not the mountains oneabstractengineer11-07-2025
- There were stupid to let Merlier off the team for last yearabstractengineer11-07-2025
MdVD is a great rider, but his attitude often puts me off at times
Has he not enough historic achievements yet? Obviously he can go on collecting more as long as nothing serious happens but would this one really be a historic achievement? Just because something didn’t happen often doesn’t mean it’s a big achievement.