It’s almost time for my favorite race on the calendar; the Tour of Flanders. This is a special race as it takes place in cycling’s Holy Land. It is also the second Monument of 2024; I rate it as the second-biggest one-day race in the whole calendar.
I will briefly mention that the race is sadly colored by the awful crash of Wout van Aert (and Mads Pedersen, Alex Kirsch, Jasper Stuyven, Jasper Philipsen and Biniam Girmay) in Dwars door Vlaanderen on Wednesday. Wout broke seven ribs, his collarbone, and his sternum and was quite clearly in both physical and emotional agony. He will miss RVV, Paris-Roubaix, Amstel Gold Race, and probably the Giro d’Italia too. I feel so awful for the big champion, and I just hope he recovers in time to parachute into the Tour de France. Stuyven is also out of RVV and PR, which changes things for his team. He deserves our best wishes and sympathy as well. Philipsen is out of Flanders with minor injuries, though I’m not sure he wanted to do the race anyway. Kirsch is sadly also out, which is quite disappointing for him and Lidl-Trek; the Luxembourger looked at his best ever level this spring. Pedersen was banged up; that won’t help on Sunday. The poor guy; Flanders and Roubaix were his biggest targets of the year and now he enters them both injured. Girmay seemed okay, and things are looking up for him this year.
Anyway, So let’s talk about the route, contenders, and race dynamics of this year’s Tour of Flanders.
Route: The 108th Ronde is 270.8 kilometers from Antwerp to Oudenaarde. The race can be easily divided into two halves; the first 135k are basically flat, and the second 135k contain all of the 17 bergs, basically all up and down for 3.5ish hours, with the exception of the final 13k, which is flat. The course uses the modern Oude Kwaremont/Paterberg finale, which is usually decisive. In fact, the Kwaremont is ridden three times, and the Paterberg twice. But it’s that finale combination which usually results in one or two riders going clear to the finish line. The Kwaremont is 2.6k at 3.5 percent, but has a section in excess of 8 percent. The Paterberg is .4k at 10 percent, but has nasty cobbles and ramps nearing 20 percent. I do not know as much about the other hellengen in the race, but it’s the 2172 elevation meters and endless repeated short hills that make this race now a toss-up between climbers and rouleurs. Most, if not all, of the sprinters are unable to handle such a parcours, though we wonder what Philipsen might have been capable of, and we have to see how Jonathan Milan does.
My top ten favorites: Mathieu van der Poel, Mads Pedersen, Matteo Jorgenson, Alberto Bettiol, Matteo Trentin, Oier Lazkano, Stefan Kung, Tim Wellens, Oliver Naesen, Matej Mohoric
I’ll run through a form check and team evaluation for each of my favorites.
MVDP: He enters as the main man with an insane record in this race including two victories. At his current level, only the mythical performance ridden last year by Tadej Pogacar was enough to defeat him on this parcours. His form so far this year has been impeccable, looking imperious in assisting Philipsen win MSR, winning E3 with the biggest margin in decades, and clearly being the strongest rider in Gent-Wevelgem but wasting too much energy and finishing second. In this race, however, a lot of observers think that he is overvalued (in the betting odds, for example, his implied probability of winning is about 67 percent) in part because his team is not as strong as it could be. Will the other teams really help Alpecin – Decueninck control the race just so MVDP can smash their leaders on the final Kwaremont/Paterberg? We will see. But MVDP probably needs some other scenarios to work in his favor in order to use his strength. For example, with no WVA or Pogi in the race, will he really want to overpower everybody 100k from the finish line? Such a solo attack could be suicide. He may actually rue their absence. And everybody will be looking at him and only him to close down every attack, especially in the rainbow jersey. Make no mistake, though, his physiological abilities on this course are so far above everybody else’s that he is still the heavy favorite.
Pedersen: He is injured following the crash. Pedersen looked poor in E3, but then the big Dane won Gent-Wevelgem over MVDP in a strong display. However, in G-V, he benefited from team tactics (Lidl-Trek has been looking spry in the later spring Classics). In De Ronde, he won’t have Stuyven nor Kirsch to help swarm MVDP. But with Milan and Toms Skujins, he still has a decent squad. However, I don’t think RVV suits him as well as G-V, which has fewer climbs. That, combined with his injuries, mean that I do not think this is the year Pedersen wins Flanders.
Matteo Jorgenson: I’m going to say that the American is in fact the third favorite for this one. He won Dwars after the big crash, so as is so often the case in this brutal sport, you might have to put an asterisk on the title. Still, he’s a good climber, and if he can handle the distance, RVV ought to suit him even better. He is very unlikely to overpower MVDP, but he could profit from an anticipatory move. His team is massively weakened by injuries, with only Dylan van Baarle and Tiesj Benoot as potential co-leaders left. They should be aggressive early.
Alberto Bettiol: After a strong showing in Dwars before a bad cramp took him out of the race, as well as a good one in MSR, the 2019 champion is a popular dark horse pick to win. I’m not really seeing it. There just are not that many big favorites for MVDP to mark, and Bettiol won’t be given much of a leash like he was when he won the race five years ago. And does anybody really see him riding away from Van der Poel on the Paterberg? I do not. So the scenarios for him to win are far-fetched, in my view. I’ve always thought Bettiol was one of the flukiest Monument winners in recent years; and in fact, according to ProCyclingStats.com (from which I got the route information and startlist), he has one of the lowest career point totals of any Monument winner in this millennium. But he’s still a threat.
Matteo Trentin: Another Italian with romantic dreams of Flanders in his heart, this guy now rides for Tudor, which is a Swiss ProTeam run by Fabian Cancellara. After doing Pogacar’s lead-out last year, Trentin is showing good form at the right time and will be Tudor’s unquestioned leader tomorrow. I’ve got him as fifth favorite because I don’t think he’ll be as tightly controlled as Bettiol, and with the right combination of riders sneaking away early, he could win if Alpecin cannot or chooses not to chase. He’ll be riding solo without much support from his teammates.
Oier Lazkano: The Spanish Champion is on his best form ever this season. My second-favorite rider is my next choice to win in a similar scenario as Trentin. He might even profit from being in the morning breakaway, if it’s at least 8-10 strong riders. If he gets five minutes before the hill zone, he might not be seen again. That’s unlikely to happen, but he’s dangerous from the first Kwaremont (135k from the finish) onward. His team offers basically no help unless Remi Cavagna gets up the road as a satellite rider. Movistar desperately needs to get at least one man in the early breakaway.
Stefan Kung: He podiumed Dwars door Vlaanderen and was likely the strongest engine left in the race, but was worked over by Visma LAB’s 1-2 punch of Jorgenson and Benoot. The Groupama – FDJ Swiss has little explosivity for attacks, no sprint, and often pulls too hard with strong riders in his wheel. That being said, he can win the Ronde van Vlaanderen if the chips fall his way. He probably will jump early, and in continuing with the theme in this piece, no time within the hill zone is too early. If he gets a gap on MVDP (who may or may not let him go with three hours left in the race) he needs to hammer the pedals until he catches the breakaway and continue going. This may or may not work, but I do not see any other strategy giving him any realistic shot at victory. Plus, it’s the proper tactic for his team with the strong sprinter Laurance Pithie sitting back (if he can hang on the climbs, which I don’t think he will… all the more reason for Kung and others to go for long-rangers).
Tim Wellens: The UAE man has been strong this early season in both domestique duties for Pogi and for his own results on the cobbles. Again, he needs to anticipate and go hard early. Swing for the fences, baby. If he cannot get away, let Nils Pollitt go up the road and roll the dice. I’d send Pollitt into the opening breakaway, if I were the UAE director and it was possible.
Oliver Naesen: One of my bigger dark horse picks for this race is the veteran hard man from Flanders iteself. He showed great form early in the cobbled season before some bad luck in the most recent races. He won’t be marked at all and thus can run rampant with a strong group attack, from you guessed it, 135-60k out. I’m giving him ninth-favorite status just because he’s so off most people’s radar, and is so strong in these cobbled races.
Matej Mohoric: I’m going to give him my last slot in the ranks of favorites because of some comments he made that just got published in Sporza, a Belgian newspaper. He said “Every night I dream about how I win Tour of Flanders. I visualize every moment of the race: every corner, every narrow road where I need to move up or every place where I need to be at the front. I hope dreams do come true.” I’ve never been Moho’s biggest fan, not out of animosity, but more just due a lack of belief in his physical capabilities and dangerous descending victories (which I believe endangers other riders who try to follow him). But you cannot deny he is one of the smartest riders in the peloton. His cunning knows no bounds, and if anybody was going to steal the 2024 Ronde van Vlaanderen from Mathieu van der Poel in a crazy late coup, it would be Mohoric.
So that’s my top ten favorites. Let’s discuss the tactics and race dynamics.
Last year, there was about 100 kilometers (covered in a neat two hours)of warfare on the flat as almost every team wanted strong representation in the breakaway, knowing that the Big Three would blow their leaders away on the final circuit. That resulted in the eventual break not getting a massive advantage before the race kicked off. It was the anticipatory attack of a strong group from about 90k out that successfully placed some of its members in the top ten, and one of them (Mads Pedersen) even finished on the final podium.
I don’t see why any team would assist Alpecin and MVDP in controlling the race. If I were any other team’s DS, I would be screaming at every member of the team to try to go up the road as early as possible. I don’t think Alpecin’s domestiques can keep a dozen big engines in check if that’s the breakaway combination. If the break isn’t as strong as I expect, then you can always send your second favorite, or main man even (assuming you don’t have a top-five favorite) from long range and hope a strong group forms to overwhelm MVDP, who will be running low on domestiques.
This year, I think the fight for the breakaway will be so relentless that the first ascent of the Kwaremont (again, this is halfway into the race and commences the 120k hill zone) will be taken by the full peloton. Because so many teams will want their second man in the morning break, Alpecin will not be happy with 10 strong men going up the road, and those teams will not get the right guy into those moves, the battle will rage on for three hours. I see a big group finally getting away on one of the smaller climbs and building a small lead before Alpecin starts controlling the race as best they can. Then, predictably, the second-tier favorites will start jumping and a group of six of them will get away, including Mr. Lazkano. They will build a 1-2 minute lead and MVDP will attack from about 55k on the second Kwaremont to try to hunt them down. I think he will come up just short in that quest because a half dozen big engines are just a hair stronger than even the King of Flanders on this route. Lazkano will sneak away with a hail mary attack from 10k out on the flat and win the race solo in a legendary edition and Spain’s first victory in De Ronde. MVDP will catch all of the stragglers and finish second in a heroic effort on the final Paterberg. Trentin will win the sprint of exhausted anticipators for third place.
So there’s my prediction for the podium. There is about a .1 percent chance this actually happens, and it’s mostly wishful thinking on my part. But a writer can dream.
Tune in tomorrow at 4:20 AM sharp EST for the best day of cycling of the entire year.
De Ronde van Vlaanderen. I never get tired of saying that. Next year, I vow to be at this race in person. LFG Flanders.
T-13 hours sharp.
Jamie
Puncheur 
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