Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Premier Tech) soloed to victory for the third time in a row in the E3 Saxo Classic, but for the first time he was nearly caught in the final kilometre.
Florian Vermeersch (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) was about to catch Van der Poel at the red kite, but chose that moment to sit up and look for one of his three companions to pull through, and found no help. With that one moment of hesitation, the chasers gave the win away to the Dutchman.
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How it unfolded
The big warm-up for the Tour of Flanders, the E3 Saxo Classic, got off to a fast start with numerous attacks. After some 40 kilometres of attacks, a group of three riders grew to six, and the gap rapidly blew out to over three minutes.
Bastien Tronchon (Groupama-FDJ), Nicholas Zukowsky (Pinarello Q36.5), Michiel Lambrecht (Team Flanders – Baloise), Stan Dewulf (Decathlon CMA CGM), Luke Durbridge (Jayco-AlUla), and Sven Erik Bystrøm (Uno-X Mobility) made up the leading group, and they were chased for most of the day by Sean Flynn and Henri-François Renard-Haquin (Picnic-PostNL) and Vojtěch Kmínek (Burgos Burpellet BH).
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