It’s that time of year again: Flanders’ Holy Week is upon us. The best race of the year; the 2025 Tour of Flanders takes place on Sunday, April 6 from Bruges to Oudenaarde. The second Momument every year, Flanders is perhaps the biggest one-day race on the calendar (and according to me, the most prestigious of the five Monuments and thus in close competition with the World Championship).
I feel this race needs little more introduction. We all know it’s a big race with an incredible history. So let’s dive into the dynamics of this year’s edition.
The route: As it has been for several years, De Ronde is an extremely long race, this year clocking in at 269km (1k shorter than last year). Also, as it has been in recent times, the first half is almost pancake-flat, with the “hill zone” commencing about 126km (a little less than three hours) into the race. The second half of the course is littered with bergs, of which there about 20, some of which are cobbled, some of which are tarmac. The decisive climbs are usually the Oude Kwaremont/Paterberg combination (and perhaps the Koppenberg), which is ridden twice and is the finale (the Kwaremont is also the first climb in the race, meaning it’s taken in three times in total). After the final Paterberg, there is a flat approximately 12k to the line. This will be more than six hours of war.
The competitors: My top four favorites are Tadej Pogacar, Mathieu van der Poel, Mads Pedersen, and Wout van Aert. I see huge gaps in this hierarchy, and the reason I have only chosen to list four is because everybody else is really in with a minuscule chance and/or is a teammate of a bigger favorite.
Pogacar won this race two years ago in dominating fashion, MVDP won it last year (when Pogacar did not participate) with an imperious solo, Pedersen is in his best shape ever, but never been competitive with the heaviest hitters in Monuments, and Wout is Wout, even though he’s pretty shit so far this year, though looking up a bit in Wednesday’s Dwars door Vlaanderen.
Pogacar showed us in 2023 that first of all, he is versatile enough to win this race, and secondly, the course is difficult for an explosive climber to drop everybody else in the finale. He also showed us in 2022 (when he finished fourth, but was the strongest climber) and in 2023 at E3 Saxo Classic (where he finished third, decimated in a sprint by WVA and MVDP) that it is necessary to go solo in order for him to win.
Pogacar is better than he was in 2023, by a healthy margin, and the course remains the same. Thus, he is the only five-star favorite.
MVDP is going to go down as the man with the greatest overall record in this race, already with three victories, two second places, and a fifth (in his debut, in which he crashed) under his belt. He is perfectly-suited to this parcours. He also will likely go down as the greatest cobbler ever. However, Pogacar exists. MVDP is my only four-star favorite.
Mads Pedersen would dearly love to win this race, probably more than any other. But he simply is not strong enough to hang with the biggest dogs when they launch. He’ll have to win through tactical games, and that does not really happen in the modern era. Pogi and MVDP are armed with lethal weapons in their teams to control the race. Even if UAE and Alpecin stuff it, Pedersen could even be allowed two minutes advantage before the final circuit, and would likely be mowed down anyway by the brutal strength of the aliens. Still, he’s unbelievably strong, and in any past era, would likely have multiple RVV titles in his palmares already. And I see a large gap between him and everyone else, so he is my only three-star favorite.
Wout seems to be declining and has never truly been competitive with MVDP in Monuments since they came of age. But he is still the strongest non-alien (and yes, he’s out of the alien category at this point), unless he has completely fallen off the cliff this winter. I’ve got him as let’s say a 2.5-star favorite, with about a dozen riders between one and two stars.
Why I am so confident of this race’s predictibility? Three factors.
The first is the obviously ridiculous strength of the legs of MVDP and even more so Pogacar. They are, by far, the strongest riders that have ever graced Flanders. Cancellara and Boonen would be utterly humiliated if they raced in this era. Merckx would be miles behind.
The second is the brutality of the race. Monuments, with the exception of MSR, are spectacularly difficult for non-favorites to win these days because the course automatically sorts out the strongest riders. Flanders is no exception.
Finally, both MVDP and Pogi bring ludicrously strong teams to lock down the race for them. There will be vanishingly small margins for tactical games. In fact, barring crashes, I see none.
Prediction time: There is no way around it: 1). Tadej Pogacar 2). Mathieu van der Poel 3). Mads Pedersen
Let’s go!
Jamie
Puncheur 
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