This was an edition where one rider dispatched his rivals at will and they were well ahead of the rest. Tadej Pogačar went solo for the win on the last time up the Oude Kwaremont climb but by then he’d already demonstrated he was the strongest in the race, he just had to convert this into a sufficient lead so he could hold off any chase on the long flat road to the finish.
175 riders on the start list, one non-starter on a cold and bright morning where the flag on top of the belfry in Brugge’s market square was slapping in the easterly breeze.
Plenty of the smaller teams tried to get in the early breakaway until a move of eight went away without several of these squads. Instead Marco Haller (Tudor), Elmar Reinders (Jayco), Alessandro Romele (XDS-Astana), Connor Swift (Ineos Grenadiers), Rory Townsend (Q36.5), Victor Vercouillie (Flanders-Baloise) and Sean Flynn (Picnic PostNL) and Timo Roosen (Picnic PostNL) went away with Swift the eye-catching rider as a possible relay for team mate Filippo Ganna later on. Several other teams tried to chase but their day was over.
The first unscripted event came in the form of crashes, at first UAE riders at different times, each left using up energy to chasing back and then Mathieu van der Poel was felled by a wave in the peloton. He back to the peloton in no time but Cyrille Guimard‘s adage of “no crash is ever harmless” came to mind and it was rare to see him among the mortals in the convoy of team cars.
Davide Ballerini attacked after the Molenberg with 110km to go and was joined by Stefan Küng and this marked a new phase. Several kilometres later Filippo Ganna joined another move which was on its way across to Küng and soon this formed a 14 group in the lead including the early breakaway. Ganna and Küng were outsiders trying to buy themselves some space but interestingly Tiesj Benoot was there for Visma-LAB, Quinten Hermans for Alpecin-Deceuninck and Lidl-Trek had Daan Hoole.
UAE were left chasing alone, twice over. The sole team doing the work and often with one rider while team mates were struggling to recover. This meant Ganna and Küng got over a minute and UAE were down on riders. But they still chased and ate into the lead on the approach the second time up the Oude Kwaremont.
If you’re a rider capable of winning Alpine stages in grand tours, how to win the Ronde? Pogačar answered this in 2023, using each climb to exploit his advantage over rivals weighing ten or more kilos more. No more so than the Oude Kwaremont, the longest climb of them all. He surged here and suddenly he was away with only Mathieu van der Poel, Mads Pedersen, Wout van Aert and Matteo Jorgenson for company. There were other riders on the course but at times they didn’t even look like extras, more like production assistants on a set expected to get out of the way once the filming started.
Pogačar exploited the climbs, attacked outright or just pressing hard. These teased out Van der Poel, Mads Pedersen and Wout Van Aert. Each time gaps opened up here, moves weren’t reacted to immediately: each time the Slovenian made a move it provoked a shake-up and had rivals reacting. It was like a game of musical chairs, only with Pogačar as a DJ rather than a participant. He played his tunes, he set the tempo.
The last time up the Oude Kwaremont saw Pogačar launch his final attack and Van der Poel responded but there was a gap. Like Ernest Hemingway going bankrupt, Van der Poel gradually being dropped, then suddenly. Pogačar was away. He went into the Paterberg with 24 seconds and kept this over the top.
This was what he needed to do but was probably at his most vulnerable all day because if he could be caught he’d surely lose the sprint. The long road to Oudenaarde, into a headwind and with a stellar chase group, including Stuyven, was his most dangerous moment. But after the chasers cleared Paterberg descent you could see the body language, elbows not quite bent tight and the time gap grew.
The Verdict
Predictable both for the victor and the manner in which he achieved it, Tadej Pogačar still put on a show. So did the others, Van der Poel, Pedersen and Van Aert never seemed to give in, at least until after the Paterberg, by which time they’d been distanced. There was suspense in it, seeing Ganna and Küng take a minute started to pose questions for UAE. Right at the end Pogačar was the strongest up the Kwaremont but it wasn’t certain he’d stay away in a headwind but it wasn’t long until the road to Oudenaarde once again became a victory parade.
Ed Pickering’s book De Ronde tells the story of the race but also the story of the 2011 edition, a tale of tactics, craft and guile as Nick Nuyens got the better of Sylvain Chavanel, Fabian Cancellara and Tom Boonen. This time no such subtlety required. The only “what if” question from the day was Mathieu van der Poel because he’d been ill since the GP E3, and his crash on the day would have cost him something too. Paris-Roubaix up next and a rematch, but this time on terrain to suit the specialists. And the forecast is hinting at rain.
Not as boring as I expected… I enjoyed it. And very glad WvA is back in the game ! I hope he can win Roubaix.
As for French riders we really are in a dark place, or rather, let’s hope, a joint between two good generations. First Frenchman was Paret-Peintre, 16th for his first Ronde (I suspect he can be better in Flandriennes than in GT and even one-week race : as usual, our better Flandrian reveal themselves after having chased the wrong objectives during several years…). In MSR it was Pacher, 29th… Gregoire was just behind and maybe a hope for the future. I guess we just have to wait for him, Martinez, Seixas and few others…
As for Belgians, isn’t it the longest drought in the Ronde of history ? Italians still have some nice cards to play, the trio Ballerini/Ganna/Trentin was fun to watch. The tradition of Spanish Flandrians is not very active in the moment, except the traditional Garcia Cortina’s top-10. Bisseger seemed very strong but always finds a way to disappear in the right moment, leaving old Küng alone for Switzerland. We could expect more of the US riders…
So far, for me, the biggest surprise of the classics is Arjen Lyvins. Always strong and just below the strongest, even if the results don’t always follow. Strange nowadays to discover a 31 years old rider doing his first world-class performances.
I’ve often done a “cobbled classics revelations” piece to highlight promising riders who had a good spring but maybe didn’t win but showed well, perhaps going in the early break and resisting for a long time or featuring in the second group. But that’d be difficult so far, the feeling that there’s just little room for anyone outside of yesterday’s podium; partly in terms of results but also attention from the cameras.
Do you think realisators show more the leaders and less the other riders than previous years ? It didn’t strike me whan watching but now you say it, I don’t remember so much images from behind… Is there really a difference with before ? Maybe it was because the suspense was already in the two or three first groups.
I thought it was a great race, even if the end result was predictable. I thoroughly enjoyed it from start to finish, I am moderately embarrassed to say.
There were two things about the race that were remarkable I think. From the second time over the Kwaremont until he was away Pogacar either attacked or, responded to attacks to shut gaps himself, relentlessly. He must have put in 20 or more accelerations of varying degrees of intensity. His ability to do this, like he did constantly in Milan-Sanremo from the Cipressa onwards, is unlike anything I have ever seen before I think. The old rules about conserving your energy and licking other peoples plate clean etc don’t seem to apply to him. Even after all that, and with 250km in the bank, he still pulled away into a headwind and didn’t look especially put out by it. It would be interesting to know how long a race actually needs to be before it induces fatigue in him.
The other remarkable point was Van der Poels seeming indestructability, until he cracked. The way he just seemed to appear back at the front of the peloton having just stacked it at 50mph reminded me of T-1000 from Terminator 2. And even after that he was responding to all of Pogacar’s moves, until he couldn’t. Anyone else would have been in a heap, like poor Degenkolb was.
The race was way more tactical than other editions between tha last couple of Oude Kwaremonts, with frequent drops in speed on the (few) flattish sections. Lots of what could be seen between bergs were skirmishes, not really any high intensity forcing or all-in bets. You could see dropped athletes coming back on the front again and again. As I noted below, this was hard enough to crush the best but, in a broader perspective, it wasn’t as deeply selective as 2023, not even by far, which contributed to even faster climbing, of course.
OTOH, the -100km to -50km hour (roughly) had been high speed, the peloton often strung out to keep at bay the powerful breaks ahead.
As a side note, I remember a similar style of racing in Classics to be Bettini’s case, although obviously not at the Ronde where he was always deployed as a support rider. Among more recent generations, Alaphilippe at his best raced sometimes with this sort of approach, both for stages and one-day races.
Generally speaking, it wasn’t uncommon at Roubaix, where sometimes the strongest rider needs to demolish the opposition with more and more accelerations on the pavé sectors to drop as many rivals as possible despite the slipstream effect.
Curiously enough, and a very different case, indeed, Nibali was also apparently doing the same on some occasions, but that was mainly because of his lack of peak power and searing acceleration, so he had to increase speed multiple times until the rivals got broken.
Great everything! Riders, crowds, weather, breaks, course, and a winner that was predicted before the start but delivered. Never an easy thing to do.
Role on Roubaix!
“So what do you do when you’re a big favourite to win but the two other riders everyone is tipping are bound to out-sprint you? Make them suffer on every uphill stretch and turn final climb into a tortuous effort. Tadej Pogačar did just that, launching on many climbs before making his final move on the Oude Kwaremont to go away solo. This kept Mads Pedersen and Mathieu van der Poel at bay so all he had to worry about was holding on for the finish. Easy to say, hard to do. This was an overwinning by Pogačar.”
I went reviewing the 2023 edition and this is from inrng’s piece back then. Copy & paste for a copy-paste race, this time probably even better, as the rivals posed more of a challenge with a broader set of tactical options. Even the time differences were quite similar between the two editions, only this time MvdP stayed with the other chasers. A faster race but on a easier day, this time around nearly 50 riders (46 to be precise) made it to the line within 2’30”, whereas in 2023 46th-placed was some 7 minutes back.
The funny thing is that out of about one hundred comments to the piece, largely enthusiast, just one or two hinted at doping insinuations.
What’s even more funny is that from a merely technical POV the couple of seasons that went by in the while should make this last race even more consistent with the profile of the rider, not the other way around.
It looks like that most commenters, when they decide to – ahem – “analyse” the credibility of a race or a rider don’t rely at all on any technical aspect. It’s just that he who wins a lot gets the bashing.
The above case-study makes it especially manifest, but of course there are several other “commutation tests”: some people focus on the dark figure of Gianetti, and reasonably so, only to end up rooting for athletes who’re riding for teams with equally dubious DSs and an even more disturbing past as a structure. Others are worried by the athlete tackling with success different kinds of competitions, i.e. Classics, cobbles and GCs, obviously disregarding the fact that the most blatant cases of “hard” doping flourished in a context of utter specialisation.
I will agree with some of your post, but I cannot really warm to Pogi. He has chosen to align himself – closely and on an insanely long contract – with one of the most odious guys in pro cycling.
I hope that Pogi is clean – for himself and for pro cycling – but I have to say that I always prefer any other rider to win. Fair or not.
I understand that, of course, and I’ve endured similar issues with athletes I liked but on the «wrong» teams. That said, personally I finally tend to root for the rider, but it’s a question to deal with, no doubt.
As for the rest, I don’t dare to hope as much. I just hope there’s some fairness towards the ahletes in terms of at least minimal respect of their health (wishful thinking) and among teams, as in when a team goes too much over the bar, being «suggested» to slow down a notch. Of course, I’m not hoping for any public scandal, they never helped much, not even in terms of a «cleaner» sport. Mutual moral suasion would work better.