Sean Kelly pinpoints decisive section of upcoming Tour of Flanders: "Pogacar is going to try and ride away on the Oude Kwaremont"
Cycling
Tour of Flanders is coming up already this Sunday and so far it seems to come down to a head-to-head clash of last two champions - Tadej Pogacar and Mathieu van der Poel. There'll be naturally many other strong riders at the start, but it's hard to imagine anyone riding these two off the wheel...
"I was holding my breath after Van der Poel's performance in Milano-Sanremo, because that's a race where you can sit and wait, so I thought he needed to make a demonstration at E3," Sean Kelly writes in his Tour of Flanders preview on Cyclingnews, "and that's exactly what he did. He was caught behind that split, but we've seen him come back from mistakes in Classics before, and that's just Mathieu - he always has the recipe to win."
Mads Pedersen made a strong statement with dominant victory at Gent Wevelgem on Sunday, can he become the wild card of Flemish monument? Kelly doesn't believe in it too much: "It's going to be Van der Poel vs Pogacar on Sunday. Pogacar is going to try and ride away on the Oude Kwaremont, which is where the race will be decided," he analyzes.
Two years ago, Pogacar made his winning move on this famed Flemish climb and in 2025 it's still the Slovenian's best shot, Kelly assumes: "The Kwaremont is where Pogacar can put the guys like Van der Poel in difficulty, which we've seen him do in the past, but will he be able to do it this time? I think it's going to be more difficult to get rid of Van der Poel if he's on a good day."
Pedersen, Wout Van Aert, or anyone else? No - Kelly simply cannot imagine anyone to stand in their way at decisive moments. "And the rest, where will they be? I think they'll have difficulty staying with those two main guys in the important moments."
Power of team
In order for Pogacar's chances to increase, he needs to put Van der Poel in red numbers as often as possible on climbs before Oude Kwaremont through the work of his teammates. But to overwhelm strong Classics team of Alpecin-Deceuninck could prove difficult.
"UAE Team Emirates - XRG will definitely try to make the race more difficult, but it's a tough one in Flanders, because it's not easy to have a lot of riders around you going into the final," Kelly points out. "UAE may have the strongest team for that in other races, ones with more climbing, but I think Alpecin-Deceuninck are the better team for Flanders."
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Other favourites
While Kelly doesn't imagine Pedersen to be in the mix for victory, he's still the third biggest favourite, Kelly admits: "He's in his best form, clearly, but it will be interesting to see how he goes on Sunday and if he can match Pogacar and Van der Poel. He is at his best, but unfortunately for him, those two are still going to be a problem." Especially uphill.
When it comes to Visma | Lease a Bike, Kelly favors Matteo Jorgenson over Wout Van Aert who "doesn't look like he's at the level that I was hoping he would be at".
Meanwhile Jorgenson already gave us glimpses of his potential last year and so far he looked pretty comfortable this spring. "He just needs to make that next step now to be able to stay with the top guys in the very final part of the races."
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- Tadej has a little more chance. It will be an exciting race and the most important thing is that no one gets hurt.
maria2024202405-04-2025 - Whatever happens tomorrow... it'll be a hell of a raceslappers6605-04-2025
- Exactly Tadej, the cancer of modern society. Full of good-for-nothing people who gain visibility and importance on social media mocking, humiliating (and worse things) to earn money. But it's the follower's fault, no followers, no "influencers".maria2024202405-04-2025
- Great commentCaralladas05-04-2025
- i’m such a sucker for those group-hug, happy ending moments between competitors, largely because it’s so WASN’T that way in my younger, stronger days. (on that note, i have this hope that somewhere down the road, maybe fifteen or twenty years, a middle aged wout and mathieu will go for a pleasure ride together in flanders, and reminisce about the days when they were the young, strong monsters that stalked the cobbles.)OCexile05-04-2025
- Just like Dwars door Vlaanderen, the Ronde van Vlaanderen was/is NOT on MAX. Get your facts straight.Ben04-04-2025
- You might bounce more for the same power, but not the same speed. Sending 20 kgs over a jump at 20 kph will fly just as far as 10 kgs at the same speed. Again, Galileo demonstrated this.acem8204-04-2025
- So, you're saying that doing a bunch of small hops on a bike is easier if you're heavier? Why do people buy lighter bikes, then? Why do they generally feel better and faster? An appeal to "rhythm" is not helpful either, as the right "rhythm" might be on the lighter or heavier side of things, and as it varies, it's likely a wash either way. Then we are left with the physics truth that it takes less power to lift lighter things than heavier things.acem8204-04-2025
- No, weight doesn't affect the ability to go into the wind at all. It's all CdA vs power at that point. For example, it's "obvious" that a heavier object falls faster than a lighter one. But, absent wind resistance, it's not true (Galileo demonstrated this). An appeal to "obviousness" doesn't matter when the physics is clear. And yes, you have to be able to hold everything else constant, or you can't determine anything! So, imagine a 300 watt rider at 80 kgs with a CdA of 2.0, then imagine that same rider at 70 kgs with a CdA of 2.0. (Assume ideal tire pressure for both, same bike.) Which one can ride over a bumpy road fastest? The lighter one, as he doesn't have to lift as much. That's also why when they test bikes on 5 star cobbled sectors, the MTB goes faster than even a cobble-build road bike. Even though rolling resistance is higher on a flat road, and the CdA is junk, it smooths out the cobbles, allowing the person to not lift as much as they otherwise would.acem8204-04-2025
- I disagree. If you have lower weight, you will bounce more at the same speed, meaning that you will spend more time in the air and shorter time on the ground, as a consequence, when you are on the ground you have to produce more force for the same speedvappaxbipmv04-04-2025