Mathieu van der Poel is one-third of his way to making history. Only 269km of cobbles, circuitous, narrow streets, and leg-sapping climbs, at one of cycling’s most brutal races, stand in the way of him and an outright record of four Tour of Flanders titles. Victory in Oudenaarde on Sunday would put him two-thirds of the way to an unprecedented achievement: winning all of the year’s first three Monuments in a row.
There’s only the small matter of one man: Tadej Pogacar.
Between them Van der Poel and Pogacar have won 13 of the last 18 Monuments, and four of the last five editions of the Ronde van Vlaanderen. Van der Poel is yet to finish off the podium so far this decade.
The pair have a stranglehold on the sport’s toughest, most gruelling one-day races, and the tactical nous, physical strength, and killer instinct required to win them. In 2023 and 2024 they equally split four of the five; you have to go back to 2019 – when Pogacar was in his first year out of the under-23 ranks – to find a season without a Monument trophy for either of them.
Now both are tied on seven apiece, and hostilities resume this weekend in Bruges. There will be 173 other riders on the start line but, beside the Belgian pair of Wout van Aert and last week’s winner in Gent-Wevelgem, Mads Pedersen, it’s hard to see anyone able to disrupt this from being an all-out duel.
Both are in something approaching the form of their life: Van der Poel swept the field in the winter cyclo-cross season to win his seventh world title in the discipline, and carried that form into the spring road races, winning Milan-San Remo – the year’s first Monument – for the second time.
After Pogacar’s glorious 2024 season, it seems he’s always in the form of his life, but for good measure, so far this year he’s lifted the UAE Tour and Strade Bianche trophies, the latter despite coming back from a bruising crash.
For both it’s something worth fighting for: for Van der Poel, the outright Tour of Flanders record, and to move ever-closer to the historic straight hat-trick of Monuments in the same season. The 30-year-old has come the closest to achieving it, along with Sean Kelly and Eddy Merckx. Kelly, by a strange twist of fate, was runner-up to Van der Poel’s father Adrie in Flanders in 1986. The junior Van der Poel won Milan-San Remo and Paris-Roubaix – the third in the trilogy – in 2023, and finished runner-up in the Tour of Flanders that year.
The winner? Pogacar, of course.
For Pogacar, it would be a second Ronde title, but crucially it would edge him ahead of his rival on eight Monuments to seven, levelling the series for 2025. And it would be revenge for his Milan-San Remo defeat; for a man unaccustomed to losing, and now twice a bridesmaid at the Italian race, that must sting. The bear has been poked.
The Slovenian’s racecraft and ability on the sharp, steep climbs – 2,300m of climbing in total – of the Flemish Ardennes makes him the marginal favourite on Sunday. But Van der Poel proved he was more than his match on the climbs of Milan-San Remo, as he glued himself to the 26-year-old’s wheel and even launched an uphill dig of his own on the infamous Poggio. If the Alpecin-Deceuninck rider can do the same tomorrow, he would once again have the beating of Pogacar in a sprint, as he did in San Remo. Out of all of the Monuments, this is the most finely balanced between the pair.
For both men it would nudge them ahead of Gino Bartali, Tom Boonen, and Fabian Cancellara, those Classics legends who also hold seven Monument titles each. It would cement a legacy, and a rivalry, between two of the best of all time. That we’re witnessing an all-time contest between two stage racing greats, in Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard, at the same time as the never-ending battle for supremacy between the Slovenian and Van der Poel, is something to behold.
Should Pogacar draw level at the finish line in Oudenaarde, we’ll get the climax to the trilogy at Paris-Roubaix next Sunday. Should Van der Poel edge out his great rival tomorrow, the “Hell of the North” will not just be a personal duel: history will be on the line. Whatever happens, there will be fireworks in Flanders.
The Tour of Flanders begins at 9am on Sunday 6 April. TV coverage from 9am on TNT Sports 1
