It’s cycling’s great debate, it’s Messi vs Ronaldo, or, more appropriately, Cancellara vs Boonen. Who’s best: Mathieu van der Poel or Wout van Aert? It’s a subjective argument, one that is rather pointless in that it achieves nothing short of bickering, but in an era of perpetually anointing someone as a GOAT (Greatest of All Time), in this epoch of a Big Six that look as talented a bunch as cycling has ever borne witness to, it keeps cropping back up.
The wider narrative will tell you that Van Aert – a winner of sprints, time trials and mountain stages – gets the nod over Van der Poel, but in the space of just nine weeks, it’s the latter who has emerged as the current leader of the argument, chalking up, arguably, the three most significant wins of his career in just nine weeks. First there was the Cyclocross World Championships, then came Milan-Sanremo, and on a sunny but chilly Sunday in Hell, it was the turn of Paris-Roubaix. The one that really mattered. A win at E3 Saxo Bank Classic is Van Aert’s lot in the same timeframe; it just doesn’t compare.
Jumbo-Visma might well have been operating in a way this spring that not even the Quick-Step teams of Tom Boonen did, but Van der Poel has been riding at a level that only Boonen, Cancellara, Museeuw, De Vlaeminck, Van Looy and Kelly can relate to. He’s among the champions.
When van Aert and Laporte attacked just before the Forest of Arenberg with more than 100km still remaining, Van der Poel was straight on their wheels. He would not let him go so easily. The Arenberg often crushes dreams (Van Aert broke his wheel on the fearsome cobbles 12 months ago), and by the time they had exited the forest, Van Aert was two teammates down: Laporte had punctured when exiting the Arenberg, and behind defending champion Dylan van Baarle had crashed to the ground.
There were other losers too, chief among them Soudal – Quick-Step who were the only big team to miss out on the front group. It’s not that they can’t locate any four-leaf clovers, but rather that they don’t have the class of their opponents. When Van der Poel and Van Aert have a moment of misfortune, they recover, they respond, and they animate once again. Quick-Step do none of that; their Classics decline is seemingly terminal.
In their place as Belgium’s best is…