Wout van Aert is a favorite for Tour of Flanders next week. Everyone’s known that since Van Aert was racing cyclocross as a teenager.
How much does his victory Friday at E3 Saxo Classic help him pave the way for Flanders glory in Oudenaarde?
Statistically speaking, not that much.
The Friday classic contested over many of the same cobbles and bergs featured in De Ronde has earned E3 Saxo Classic and its many iterations the title of the “Little Tour of Flanders.”
The Paterberg-Oude Kwaremont double is there (raced once Friday compared to two times at Der Ronde), and so is the Taaienberg, the trademark cobbled climb where Tom Boonen often made his race-winning accelerations in De Ronde.
It’s true that winning at Harelbeke bodes well for success at Tour of Flanders.
That’s only natural, because it’s a confirmation of form. The race’s winner’s list is full of “bigs” so it’s obvious if a rider wins at E3, success at De Ronde only 10 days later is a logical next step.
But winning more than one major race in a season is tricky, especially two as hotly contested as this pair.
Some 15 riders have won E3 and later won at Flanders. That’s one feat, however, that Eddy Merckx never accomplished, because E3 is one of the rare races he started but never won.
Only nine riders, however, have won both in the same season, making it one of cycling’s most elusive “doubles.”
Riders like Johan Museeuw and Peter Van Petegem pulled it off the 1990s-2000s, and later Tom Boonen managed it three times. Fabian Cancellara did it twice, as did Niki Terpstra, and Kasper Asgreen, the last to do it in 2021.
Another stat: Though he never won Tour of Flanders, Geraint Thomas is the only Tour de France winner to also win E3, which he won in 2015 a few years before his 2018 yellow jersey.
Tadej Pogačar came close Friday with third.
So what to expect next Sunday at De Ronde?
If Friday’s race is any indication, one heck of a race. Van Aert, Mathieu van der Poel, and Pogačar – cycling’s “Three Kings” — roar into the Belgian monument all with very real chances of victory.
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