It’s lonely on the road, with only thousands upon thousands of adoring fans for company. After cresting the top of the Kruisberg, Wout van Aert still had 26km to race, but he must have sensed the Tour of Flanders was already lost.
The roar of the home crowd can only inspire a man so far at a time like this. All the good wishes in Belgium weren’t going to bridge the gap being opened by Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) and Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck).
Van Aert was the local favourite for a Ronde always destined to fall to one of the Big Three, but he was the first of their number to blink in the finale, floored by a jab from his old sparring Van der Poel on the Kruisberg. When the Dutchman and the eventual winner Pogačar disappeared from view, Van Aert was condemned to his solitary but very public pursuit.
For a time, Van Aert managed to limit his deficit to 10 seconds, but the strength of the men ahead began to tell. Once Van der Poel and Pogačar bridged up to the earlier escapees, Van Aert’s Jumbo-Visma teammate Nathan Van Hooydonck dropped back to help the chase. By then, there was little to be done. The grandest prize of all was already out of reach.
Van Aert would eventually reach the remnants of the early break over the Kwaremont, but by the time he got there, Pogačar and Van der Poel had already been and gone. He would make it to Oudenaarde 1:12 in fourth place, beaten to the final step of the podium in the sprint by Mads Pedersen (Trek-Segafredo).
On crossing the finish line, Van Aert rolled straight through the mixed zone, his head bowed. He didn’t respond to the attempts of multiple camera crews to flag him down, but then he hadn’t even stopped to take a drink from his soigneur at the finish line. For the initial mourning period, he just needed to be alone.
Half an hour or so later, Van Aert emerged from the Jumbo-Visma bus to put words on his day. Although the Belgian won the E3 Saxo Classic against Van der Poel and Pogačar last week, he had struggled to follow them on the Kwaremont, and that knowledge seemed to weigh heavily here.
“I was a bit surprised by Mathieu van der Poel’s bomb,” Van Aert said. “Perhaps my mind was already too preoccupied with what was yet to come. But the legs have spoken. If I couldn’t keep up with that, I wouldn’t have been able to follow on the Oude Kwaremont either.”
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