Pogacar's quest, Van Aert's redemption and the moments that defined the cobbled Classics

With Tadej Pogačar’s cobbled racing limited to just the Ronde and Roubaix, the expectation was that Mathieu van der Poel would have things all his own way at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and the E3 Saxo Classic, particularly with his old sparring partner Wout van Aert also an absentee.

Van der Poel’s victory at Omloop was bordering on the nonchalant, as he somehow skirted around a crash on the Molenberg and then effortlessly dispatched his breakaway companions on the Muur. Some towering displays at Tirreno-Adriatico only added to murmurs that this might be the best iteration yet of Van der Poel, but the veneer of invincibility was suddenly broken when he was distanced by Pogačar on the Poggio at Milan-Sanremo. The finger injury Van der Poel picked up in the crash before the Cipressa offered obvious mitigation, but the Dutchman still seemed eager to reinforce his aura at the E3 Saxo Classic six days later.

Too eager, perhaps. When Van der Poel first struck out on the Taaienberg with 70km, it looked like another procession for one the peloton’s grandees, but there were signs something was awry when he later struggled to dispatch early escapee Stan Dewulf on the Paterberg. 

On the run-in to Harelbeke, Van der Poel’s lead began to evaporate, and it seemed he had overestimated his strength and underestimated the conditions. The game looked to be up when the chasers closed to within touching distance, but their absurd stand-off beneath the flamme rouge gave Van der Poel a late reprieve. 

Van der Poel showed resilience and street smarts to win the day, and this E3 win was among the most memorable of his career – but it also indicated the direction of travel ahead of his Pogačar duel the following week.

Wout van Aert’s various agonies at the Classics have been well documented over the years, so much so that the man Marc Madiot once called the “ultimate rider” entered the campaign almost as an outsider for glory. There seemed to be no end in sight for Pogačar and Van der Poel’s duopoly on the cobbles and there also appeared to be no end to Van Aert’s run of rotten luck.

Van Aert began 2026 by fracturing his ankle in a cyclocross race, and although he and his Visma | Lease a Bike team insisted the Classics weren’t at risk, it was hardly a promising omen. The portents grew even more ominous when illness forced Van Aert to miss Omloop, while a late puncture ruined his challenge at Le Samyn.

But things steadily picked up from there, and perhaps it helped that Visma | Lease a Bike had finally stopped overthinking Van Aert’s Classics build-up. After opting for altitude camps in March in 2024 and 2025, Van Aert returned to basics this year, racing Strade Bianche, Tirreno-Adriatico and Milan-Sanremo to build his form for April.

The Italian swing served its purpose. Although Van Aert was well off Pogačar at Strade Bianche and overshadowed by Van der Poel at Tirreno, he scored a morale-boosting podium spot in Sanremo, his first at a Monument in three years.

Van Aert resisted the temptation to add E3 Harelbeke to his programme, but there were more encouraging signs from Gent-Wevelgem, where he attacked on the penultimate time up the Kemmelberg and then resisted Van der Poel’s acceleration on the last time up the climb.

The old foes didn’t find entirely common cause on the run-in to Wevelgem, and Van der Poel’s teammate Jasper Philipsen won the sprint after they were swept up, but Van Aert would have taken plenty of heart from his display. 

He would impress again at Dwars door Vlaanderen three days later, even if he would be caught and passed by Filippo Ganna within sight of the line. The trauma of this latest defeat was more readily absorbed than his 2025 setback. Van Aert was back in the ballpark and ready to take a swing.

It wasn’t really the secret Ralph Denk and Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe claimed it to be. After all, there had been whispers about Remco Evenepoel making his Tour of Flanders debut since last November. Why? Because Evenepoel himself had told Het Laatste Nieuws of his desire to ride the Ronde. 

Still, for the next five months, despite sightings of Evenepoel training on the course, both rider and team continued to deny blindly that he would ride the Tour of Flanders. They repeated the line at the Volta a Catalunya, and again when Wielerflits broke news of his participation on the Tuesday before the Tour of Flanders.

Still, while the needless subterfuge was more than a touch tiresome, confirmation that Evenepoel would indeed ride the Tour of Flanders was genuinely exciting and potentially game changing. Just when the Ronde looked set to become a routine Pogačar exhibition, a wildcard of the most exceptional quality had entered the fray.

As a teenaged neo-pro, Evenepoel had expressed an aversion to the cobbles, but he had begun to train more regularly in the Flemish Ardennes as the years went by. Pogačar, meanwhile, had shown that the modern Tour of Flanders was accessible to riders of a lighter build. The arguments against racing it were receding.

Evenepoel’s late entry breathed new life into the build-up to the Tour of Flanders, with his every move – and pastry purchase – on the pre-race recon documented for posterity. Everybody had an opinion on his chances, and most of them were positive. Former champions like Johan Museeuw suggested he could even win it. True, positioning might be a problem, but his Red Bull team was equipped to overcome any shortcomings in that area. 

Above all, writing off Evenepoel is never wise – and nobody realised that more than Pogačar.

Evenepoel duly made it unscathed through the early phases of the Tour of Flanders, and, along with Van der Poel, he was the only man with the strength to follow Pogačar’s first big move on the second ascent of the Oude Kwaremont. Game on.

The Belgian was clearly warming to his task, but so were the crowds on the roadside, and that wall of noise might have contributed to what happened next. On the first time up the Paterberg, Evenepoel was no longer content simply to follow Pogačar. Ever the showman, he drew up alongside the Slovenian and even briefly nudged ahead. 

Much like Michael Jordan, Pogačar seemed to take that defiance personally. He dialled up the intensity just enough to drop Evenepoel by the top of the Paterberg, condemning him to a spirited but ultimately fruitless chase all the way to Oudenaarde.

Van der Poel managed to track Pogačar, and that pair carried a slender lead over Evenepoel for the next 20km. While Van der Poel seemed almost indifferent to Evenepoel’s presence at the front, Pogačar was very determined to make sure he didn’t latch back on.

Evenepoel made up ground on every flat section of tarmac, and ahead of the Koppenberg and again just before the cobbles at Maria Borrestraat, he closed to within touching distance of the leaders. On each occasion, however, Pogačar pointedly put in a mammoth acceleration to keep him at bay.

Evenepoel’s resistance would eventually fade ahead of the final time up the Kwaremont, at which point Pogačar burnt off Van der Poel, safe in the knowledge that he wouldn’t have an ally to help his pursuit in the finale.

At first glance, Pogačar’s third Ronde victory was almost a carbon copy of his first two, but the Evenepoel factor had added an additional layer of complexity to the whole endeavour. The 2027 Tour of Flanders can’t come quickly enough.

In some respects, cycling has changed beyond all recognition in the 2020s, but the gnarled cobbles of the Arenberg Forest remain steadfastly indifferent to modernity. This old track has been derailing Paris-Roubaix ambitions since it was first included in 1968, and it was once again decisive in 2026.

Although the cobbles already begin at Troisvilles, the Trouée d’Arenberg marks the true entry to Hell, and everybody makes their calculations accordingly. When Pogačar punctured with over 120km to go and then endured a double bike change, he knew he was in a race against time to make it back to the front group before the Arenberg. If he didn’t, then his quest to win all five Monuments in one season was over.

Pogačar succeeded in his pursuit, and the Arenberg instead proved the graveyard of his chief rival’s ambitions. Van der Poel had looked typically smooth on the pavé to that point, but a puncture marked the beginning of the end of his challenge.

Van der Poel’s only thought was to get out of the forest any way he could, and his first instinct was to take Jasper Philipsen’s bike. They were, however, on different pedal systems, forcing Van der Poel to stop again and instead take a wheel from Tibor Del Grosso. After a frantic change, he got going only to puncture again almost immediately. He would exit the Arenberg over two minutes off the pace, and despite a fierce chase, he would never see the front again.

Van der Poel’s travails drew all the attention in the Arenberg, but it was telling that Van Aert was the man who led the race across the most notorious sector of the race. He had already suffered an early puncture, and he would endure another in the finale, but Van Aert’s presence at the front was perhaps already a signal that this might be his day.

It was certainly of a piece with a Classics campaign that had been in steady crescendo, and he seized the moment by launching the winning move with 54km to go. Pogačar, inevitably, came with him, but as Roubaix drew nearer, Van Aert’s belief seemed to grow firmer.

The world champion tried to shake him off with fierce combinations at Mons-en-Pévèle and the Carrefour de l’Arbre, but Van Aert withstood the blows. By the time they reached the velodrome, Van Aert began to look like the favourite, but he has had his heart broken in these situations before, from the 2020 Tour of Flanders to last year’s Dwars door Vlaanderen. 

This time, however, Van Aert wasn’t to be denied, and Pogačar will have to wait at least another year to complete the full set of Monument victories. A dizzying edition of Paris-Roubaix had a seismic ending.