By Big Ring Editorial Staff · The Big Ring Report
Tadej Pogačar arrives at the Tour of Flanders on Sunday as the defending champion, the world champion, and the man who just completed his Monument collection at Milan-San Remo. He is, by any reasonable measure, the prohibitive favourite. But Flanders is not San Remo. The Oude Kwaremont, the Paterberg, the Koppenberg, and the Kruisberg do not reward the same kind of riding. And the field assembled in Antwerp on April 5 contains several riders who have beaten him before, or who have the specific profile to make his life genuinely difficult.
Here is who has a realistic chance of standing on the top step in Oudenaarde.
**Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Premier Tech)**
The most compelling subplot of the entire spring. Van der Poel could become the first rider in history to win the Tour of Flanders four times. He has won it in 2020, 2022, and 2023, and he has been the dominant force in this race for half a decade. The question hanging over him is the hand and hip injury he sustained in a crash at Milan-San Remo, which left him unable to grip his handlebars properly on descents. He finished eighth despite that, which is either reassuring or alarming depending on how you look at it.
He tackled the E3 Saxo Classic course in reconnaissance this week with new, wider handlebars fitted to help manage the injury. The fact that he is starting at all suggests the team believes he can compete. If he is anywhere near full fitness, he is the one rider in this race who can match Pogačar on the climbs and beat him on the technical sections. Van der Poel's bike-handling on the narrow Flemish roads is in a category of its own. His record at E3, a race that uses many of the same climbs, is four podiums from four starts. He knows this terrain better than anyone alive.
**Wout van Aert (Visma-Lease a Bike)**
Van Aert has never won the Tour of Flanders. He has finished second once, in 2020, and has been a factor in most editions since. This year he arrives with something to prove after a spring disrupted by illness, and after watching Pogačar win San Remo while he was still trying to find his legs. His team, Visma-Lease a Bike, has never won Flanders. That is a motivating fact for an entire organisation.
Van Aert's profile suits Flanders better than it suits San Remo. He is a bigger, more powerful rider who handles the cobbles and the sustained climbs of the Flemish ardennes well. He will have Christophe Laporte and Fred Wright in support, which gives him tactical options. The question is whether the illness-affected preparation has left him with enough top-end power to follow Pogačar when the race explodes on the final climbs. At San Remo he podiumed despite being underprepared. That is either a sign of class or a sign that the race did not go hard enough early enough. Flanders will answer that question.
**Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek)**
The former world champion has had a spring that would have broken a lesser rider. He fractured his collarbone and wrist in Valencia in February, missed weeks of racing, and then finished fourth at Milan-San Remo on what was effectively his season debut. That result was not an accident. Pedersen is a rider who finds a way.
He has raced E3 eight times, more than any other top contender. He knows the Flemish roads as well as any non-Belgian in the peloton. He finished second at E3 last year and third at Flanders. His ceiling in this race is a win, and he has the tactical intelligence to make it happen if Pogačar and Van der Poel neutralise each other. Lidl-Trek also has Matthias Vacek in support, a fast-rising talent who adds a genuine second option if the race comes down to a small group sprint.
**Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Premier Tech)**
Philipsen is the wild card. He is the fastest sprinter in the peloton when the race comes down to a reduced group, and Flanders occasionally does. He was not at E3, which was a deliberate choice to keep him fresh for the bigger target. His team has Van der Poel as the primary card, but Philipsen is not a domestique in this race. If the final selection is larger than expected, or if the race comes back together on the run-in to Oudenaarde, Philipsen wins. It is that simple.
**Dylan van Baarle (Soudal-QuickStep)**
Van Baarle has never finished higher than second at Flanders, but he is one of the most consistent performers in the race over the past five years. He won Paris-Roubaix in 2022. He knows how to read a cobbled Classic and how to be in the right place at the right moment. Soudal-QuickStep will use him alongside Jasper Stuyven, giving the team two legitimate options. Van Baarle is not the kind of rider who wins by attacking from distance, but if the race comes down to a group of five or six, he is dangerous.
**The honest assessment**
Pogačar will be the favourite on Sunday and nothing that happens at E3 on Friday will change that. But this is not a race where one rider can simply ride everyone else off his wheel from 80 kilometres out, the way he can at Liège or Lombardia. The Flemish climbs are short and brutal, not long and selective. The cobbles are unpredictable. Crashes happen. Punctures happen. Van der Poel, if healthy, is the only rider in this race who has beaten Pogačar in a Monument. He could do it again.
The Tour of Flanders starts in Antwerp on Sunday, April 5 at 10:00 local time. The finish in Oudenaarde is expected around 16:30.