As Mathieu van der Poel soloed his way to victory at the Tour of Flanders on Sunday, powering towards Oudenaarde with victory in sight, the group of Dutch or Belgian fans in front of me in the fan zone on the Oude Kwaremont turned around and accosted me and my friends for not clapping vociferously enough for the new champion.
Maybe it was the grim weather or the fact we had been standing in the same bit of Belgian bog for three hours by this point, but none of us seemed particularly enamoured by Van der Poel’s third win at De Ronde, his third in just five editions, in fact. It was a seriously impressive ride given everything, and potentially Van der Poel’s best victory, but it didn’t fill us with the excitement we craved.
It’s difficult to explain this level of indifference to a legend being crowned in front of our eyes, and maybe it is just our cynicism, but ultimately it felt like Van der Poel was always going to win on Sunday, and this inevitability felt a bit dull. The winning margin was only just over a minute in the end, but it felt like there was a yawning chasm between the Dutchman and everyone else. A chasm which made the race feel a bit boring in the end, despite the epic weather.
Last year, when we were stood in exactly the same spot doing exactly the same thing, Tadej Pogačar’s victory happened right in front of our eyes, and felt different, possibly because until the point he launched his winning attack, it still wasn’t completely clear that the Slovenian could win this Monument.
We already knew Van der Poel had the power to win Flanders, but with Pogačar not present, and with Wout van Aert out with an injury sustained at Dwars door Vlaanderen last week, the field was lacking a likely challenger to prevent the Dutchman’s victory. It felt inevitable. Add the fact that other contenders like Mads Perdersen and his Lidl-Trek squad were hampered after the same Classics-defining crash, and Van der Poel had it all his own way.
Watching the world champion roll out of Antwerp on Sunday morning, it felt like he was going to win. As others struggled in the muddy conditions on the Koppenberg and Paterberg, it felt like he was going to win. And so he did.
None of this is in any way bad, and it is testament to how good - potentially great - a rider Van der Poel is, one that has now won five Monuments, but it does not make for thrilling sport, one which enthrals. It was not an easy win by any means, but there was no great battle in this year’s men’s race. This is nothing new, of course, and is replicated in stage racing at the moment by both Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard, but less inevitability and more of a contest would be very welcome.
This stood in contrast to a much more open, much more exciting women’s race, which is not a surprise. Elisa Longo Borghini’s victory came at the end of a titanic tussle, and was not guaranteed until right at the end, thanks to Kasia Niewiadoma’s tenacity. The minor mistakes made by Lotte Kopecky and her SD Worx-Protime team made the race even more predictable, and the grim conditions made it an epic, something the men’s race wasn’t.
Paris-Roubaix is next week, a race that is even harder to control or predict, but with no Van Aert, and others still affected by that Dwars crash, a Van der Poel victory would be hard to bet against.
Just as with the Dutchman’s friend, Pogačar, it feels that it would take something remarkable for him not to be challenging for the win. I’ll be hoping for a bigger challenge at Roubaix, even if Van der Poel gets his hands on another cobblestone in the velodrome.
I suppose, in a way, this is a long winded way of responding to those drunk fans on the Kwaremont. Van der Poel might be impressive, but I don’t enjoy inevitability.
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If you want to get in touch with Adam, email adam.becket@futurenet.com.
