"You guys should be sent back to amateur level": Chris Horner slams awful tactics of Tadej Pogacar's opponents at Ronde

The 2026 Tour of Flanders featured an impressive showdown between Mathieu van der Poel and Tadej Pogacar, with the Slovenian rider claiming his third victory at De Ronde. In many ways, a clash between these two stars was anticipated, but the manner in which the final moments played out, as well as the events leading to the race's culmination left a rather bitter feeling in Chris Horner's mouth.

The key point of the race turned out to be the Molenberg helling, more than 100 kilometers from the finish line. It was on the run-in to this climb when UAE's Nils Politt put in a massive effort to stretch out the peloton in a brief echelon. This effort had two effects: firstly exposing low attentiveness of some favourites such as Wout Van Aert and Mads Pedersen who barely made it into the front split. Secondly, that Pogacar's opponents have learned nothing from past editions.

Eventually, a group of 16 riders broke off the peloton. Pogacar still had a teammate in Florian Vermeersch, creating a perfect scenario where he wouldn't be forced to cover every move on his own. Well, if any moves would've come at all.

In fact, all the teams represented in this group kept taking pulls with the overwhelming favourite. Thus, aside from catching the morning breakaway, the group of favourites arrived to the second ascent of Oude Kwaremont mostly intact.

As riders reached the foot of Kwaremont, Pogacar immediately set off to an attack - according to Horner a perfect opportunity to simply let the Slovenian burn his matches while his challengers organize a chase behind... Except none of that ever happened.

At least one man seemed to understand what was going, the lone Lidl-Trek rider Mads Pedersen. "He backed off and was letting the Slovenian go," Horner highlights in his Youtube analysis. "This is the wisest move you can do at this moment with 58 kilometers to go - let Pogacar go up the road solo."

However his brief moment of hope quickly disappeared: "But guess what? Wout Van Aert starts to close up to the back wheel of Pogacar. This is a big time mistake."

The Belgian looks like his 2022 version, almost comfortably sat on the Slovenian's wheel... and where is Van der Poel? The Dutchman was caught napping at the start of the climb and now he has to expand sufficient amount of energy just to close the gap to the leading duo as he flies past dropped riders, including Pedersen. Van der Poel and Evenepoel are able to crawl back to the world champion and barely hang on while Van Aert's dream turns to naught just meters under the climb's summit.

But that's not all, the steep Paterberg is around the corner. And Evenepoel decides to pull his two opponents to the foot, just to get distanced 100 meters into the climb. That leaves three-time champion Van der Poel alone against Pogacar, surely he'd stop taking turns now? No. And that's his last mistake as Pogacar doesn't mess around and drops Van der Poel over the final Kwaremont-Paterberg combination, winning in style.

"Now he's about to destroy everyone and bring you back to the first rule here when you started Tour of Flanders: 'Do not pull Tadej Pogacar around', as he's soloing up over the top," Horner stares at his TV in disbelief.

"All you guys are knuckleheads Your director sportif, should be fired. You guys should be sent back to amateur level racing as all of you guys do not know how to race your bike whatsoever," the 2013 Vuelta a Espana champion slams the tactics he has seen on Sunday.

"Now, Tadej Pogacar, you are exceptional. Tip of the hat," Horner applauds the Slovenian as well as he looks ahead to the Hell of the North: "Pogacar of course wants to go into Paris-Roubaix with a shot at winning there so he can win all five monuments in the 2026 season. And at this point, if everyone's going to keep racing like they did at Tour of Flanders, they should just go ahead and give him the trophy right now because everything I saw today was pure knuckleheadism from everyone."