Before the 2026 Tour of Flanders, Tadej Pogačar, Mathieu van der Poel, Remco Evenepoel and Wout van Aert had only met on the start line of two one-day races together. Both times were at the World Championships, in 2022 and 2023. But on Sunday, they faced off for an epic, rare battle on the road from Antwerp to Oudenaarde and, in a memorable edition, the phenomenal Slovenian emerged victorious for his 12th Monument success.
This moves Pogačar to second place on the all-time leaderboard for victories at cycling’s five most prestigious one-day races, ahead of Roger De Vlaeminck and with only Eddy Merckx’s, in theory, untouchable total of 19 left to chase.
The stats are endless and the superlatives are all exhausted – so much so that Evenepoel’s DS Klaas Lodewyck turned to another sport to muster up a comparison: “He’s brilliant. He’s the Messi or Ronaldo of cycling,” he told Cyclingnews – and his rivals simply have no answers in 2026.
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“When you go to the biggest races of the year, you never can expect it to be easy, and today was really hard,” said Pogačar as he sat down for his winner’s press conference, some time after he crossed the line alone with his fist in the air.
Pogačar repeated what he did in 2023 and 2025, attacking away finally on the final of three reps up the Oude Kwaremont climb, but this came after his team blew the race to pieces at 102km to go on the Molenberg.
Florian Vermeersch did the damage with the rainbow jersey in his wheel, drawing 16 of the top riders out of the peloton to form a group of favourites, and then Pogačar put everyone to the sword on the second time up the Kwaremont, where only Van der Poel and debutant Evenepoel could follow.
He…
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