Tadej Pogačar is the big favourite to win. What if the weather was harder to forecast? Cold, wet and wintry conditions are due for the run down to Liège with the chance of snow. If so then just last Wednesday’s Flèche Wallonne this could change plenty and wardrobe choices and upcoming goals can weigh on the results as much as form.
What do you see in the picture above? Three cyclists on a podium? The Flèche Wallonne podium? Right now some team managers see 400, 320 and 260 UCI points as they and their teams aim for promotion to the World Tour or worse, stress about relegation.
An update on the promotion and relegation standings as we’re now about halfway through the three year cycle. The relegation contest is raging and if it’s not front page news, well you’re already reading a niche blog about the sport so you’ll probably be thinking of this contest when looking at results in the coming months…
Marc Hirschi attacks on the Geulhemmerberg, his third big attack of the day. Tiesj Benoot and Tom Pidcock follow, as does Mauri Vansevenant. Hirschi might have been the strongest on the day and his work helped the move go clear but the fatigue might have cost him and Pidcock would get the better of him.
He’s on form, he’s on home soil and he’s a past winner but Mathieu van der Poel won’t have it easy here as the hilly terrain and a long list of challengers should make things harder.
Seeing so many riders on the ground in Dwars Door Vlaanderen and then the Tour of the Basque Country was grim. The fact that so many star names were involved has invariably given these incidents more prominence; more than the huge crash in the Roue Tourangelle a couple of weeks back. Unjust but if it leads to more debate and eventual safety measures than it might benefit all.
Safety improvements have been a regular topic, rightly so. Changes are coming but they can’t come soon enough. And they won’t solve everything, far from it.
Mathieu van der Poel goes solo with 60km to go. His moved looked telegraphed but there was nothing his rivals could do, because when they tried Alpecin-Deceuninck’s Gianni Vermeersch made sure they could not.
The last of the cobbled classics and the most exceptional one, in every sense. And yet the obvious outcome is a repeat of last Sunday with Mathieu van der Poel going away for a solo win.
Is Paris-Roubaix the last of the cobbled classics or a race apart? Surely both, it’s so different from the previous cobbled classics as the pavé are bigger and rougher. If someone came up with the race today it would never happen.
All change. Professional cycling has seen rising interest from the Middle-East, especially Saudi Arabia. Now this has gone from tentative handshakes and side sponsorships to a takeover with the news that the Tour of Flanders has been bought by Saudi investors. The race is to be rebranded as the “Flanders Tour presented by Al Lua” and move to the desert.
Mathieu van der Poel attacks on the Koppenberg. Matteo Jorgenson and Mads Pedersen try to chase but they’re quickly distanced, the Dane loses 30 seconds by the top but fared better than the rest of the lead group as they were left walking up the climb. Van der Poel left them standing.