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Tadej Pogačar has received the 107th Tour of Flanders, underlining his standing as considered one of this technology’s premier highway cyclists.
The 2020 and 2021 Tour de France champion survived a variety of big crashes that noticed a number of riders abandon with accidents.
Regardless of getting caught up within the carnage, Pogačar saved himself injury-free and rode away from his two massive rivals, Dutch two-time champion Mathieu van der Poel and Belgian Wout van Aert, soloing to victory with 17 kilometres to go on the gruelling 273km race via northern Belgium.
The Slovenian rider completed the race in six hours, 12 minutes and one second, 17 seconds forward of an exhausted van der Poel.
Danish rider Mads Pederson simply pipped van Aert within the dash for third, a minute and 13 seconds behind.
“I knew that to go solo I wanted to go on the Kwaremont the final time, I simply gave all of it,” Pogačar mentioned after the race.
“I knew that it was going to be robust however it was the one method to go to the end.”
This was Pogačar’s sixteenth day of racing in 2023. It was his tenth victory.
Solely two males have ever received the Tour de France and the one-day Tour of Flanders: French legend Louison Bobet in 1955 and Belgian Eddy Merckx, who received his second Tour of Flanders in 1975.
The 2-time Tour de France champion and grand tour specialist now has received three of the 5 one-day monuments and, at simply 24 years previous, nonetheless has a lot extra racing to return in his profession, together with regaining his Tour de France title later within the yr.
“I believe he was unbeatable as we speak,” van der Poel mentioned of Pogačar, who added that it was in all probability his finest ever efficiency in “the Ronde” however he simply did not have sufficient to go together with his youthful rival.
The Tour of Flanders had been hyped as a battle between three of biking’s most full riders: Pogačar (24 years previous), van der Poel (28) and van Aert (28).
They didn’t disappoint.
This trio have been going at one another, hammer and tongs, for the reason that begin of the yr, serving up some excellent racing at one-day races throughout Europe.
Van der Poel claimed victory within the first monument of the yr at Milan-San Remo, whereas van Aert received the E3 Saxo Basic.
It took the trio some time to return collectively in earnest, however Pogačar attacked on the Kwaremont climb with simply over 50km to go.
An additional acceleration on the Koppenberg broke the remainder of the chasers and arrange his 17km solo effort.
Pogačar mentioned he may already think about his season a hit, even joking that he can retire and be happy with his profession.
He added that he wouldn’t rule out difficult for the 2 monuments lacking from his assortment — Paris-Roubaix and Milan-San Remo — later in his profession.
Fast tempo, crashes mar first half of race
A fast opening hour — the quickest ever by nearly 5 kilometres per hour — ensured that no breakaway may type as a result of helter-skelter nature of the peloton.
The race was typified by a variety of massive crashes, with nearly each group affected by some brutal shunts.
Cross winds triggered an early cut up that had van der Poel within the second group, earlier than a crash noticed Pogačar caught out and compelled into chasing again on.
That crash noticed Dutch rider Danny van Poppel abandon however was removed from the worst because the peloton turned jittery as they approached the key obstacles of cobbles, vertiginous climbs and mixture of the 2 that characterise the historic Flemish monument.
Polish rider for Bahrain Victorious, Filip Maciejuk, triggered the most important pile up although, after hopping again onto the highway and careering into the peloton at full tempo.
A number of riders went down and a quantity have been compelled to desert with their accidents.
Maciejuk was subsequently disqualified from the race and issued an apology on twitter during which he described his transfer as “a giant error” in judgement.
In a separate incident, Eritrean outdoors wager Biniam Girmay additionally got here down onerous in a crash because the race took its toll.
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