Cancellara’s Classics column: Mathieu van der Poel will break the Tour of Flanders record, it’s just a matter of time

Sometimes, all you can do is say ‘chapeau.’ Mathieu van der Poel was the strongest rider and he won the Tour of Flanders decisively, but his Alpecin-Deceuninck team deserves a special mention too.

Everybody knew Mathieu was the favourite before the race, and everybody had a similar idea about how to try to beat him – isolate him by destroying his team. They might even have felt encouraged to do that by what they saw from Van der Poel’s team at E3 Saxo Classic. But on the biggest day, Alpecin-Deceuninck stood up to everything that was thrown at them.