To the guy who made not winning an Aert form

With humble deference to female bike racers (all the glorious stuff that is happening in the women’s peloton will get its own attention at a later date), this one is mostly about the men’s side.

For the normal people amongst you, let me stop to give a brief mention of how awesomely intense bike racing is in the low countries this time of year. The Spring Classics are a series of one day races that take place in places that don’t have the dramatic mountain backdrops of the Alps, Pyrenees, or Dolomites for the simple reason that there is snow covering them so you can’t ride your bike there. Yet.

Instead, they race through the mud and cols and bergs and cobblestones in the hill countries of Belgium, the Netherlands, France, and Italy. There are around 20 races total, taking place on weekends, and Wednesdays, from the end of February to the beginning of May (with one in the fall, the Race of the Falling leaves, in Lombardy, Italy). This is a mad house period of time for everyone who will never win the Tour de France to push all their cards in and go for broke, gambling their entire season, and career, on winning.

Win one of the monuments (Milan-San Remo, Tour of Flanders, Paris-Roubiax, Liege-Bastogne-Liege, Tour of Lombardy) and your name is etched in lore forever. Similar to winning the Stanley Cup, the Kentucky Derby or the Indy 500, everything else is a training race.

In all its muddied past, very few cyclists (six total) have won both a Grand Tour (Giro, Tour, Vuelta) and a monument. Both are extraordinarily difficult prospects requiring very different types of riders to overcome the challenges. Grand Tours are typically won by riders who can climb and time trial the best, survive the sprint stages, and avoid the crashes. Lighter weight riders with superb bike handling skills typically do terrible over the bumpy and lumpy roads of northern Europe and central Italy- they get tossed around by the relentless, short, steep hills and terrible roads of the spring classics. Only one American has conquered a monument, the oldest of them all, the 2003 Liege-Bastogne-Liege was won by American Tyler Hamilton a year before he was found guilty of blood doping.

This is the land and time for the strong men. Belgians, Dutch, and Norwegians, guys from wind swept places like northern France and Ireland have their place on the start lines of the monuments. Racing 260km through the worst of the worst is not a place for flamboyant Italians or wispy Basques who fly up hills like birds of paradise. The grimpeurs will get their chance of course, but the spring is for the rouleurs and punchers, the heavy weights of cycling to slug it out.

Two cyclists stand out in the pantheon of greats — the greatest and the guy who is going to take his throne. The Cannibal (Eddy Merckx) is the only rider in history to have won all three Grand Tours and all five monuments. There was no one like him- fearless, relentless, unforgiving, supremely talented, and massively driven. He won everything and didn’t give anyone else a chance. He is worthy of great praise and great hatred if you raced against him— combine, Tom Brady, Michael Jordan, and Wayne Gretzky and you get about halfway to the legend of the Cannibal.

But even the Cannibal couldn’t do what Pogi (Tadej Pogacar) is “accidentally” about to do. At 27, this Slovenian has won the Tour and Giro and will win the Vuelta when he gets around to racing it, and has begun to win the monuments too, for one simple reason- no one on the planet enjoys racing their bicycle more than Tadej Pogacar. He can climb, he can time trial, he can train, he can learn and adapt to produce more power and excitement than any cyclist today. He loves to race, and even more than that he loves to win, so he figures out how to succeed, if not the first time then definitely the second.

Pogi is about to attempt to win all five monuments in the same year and win a Grand Tour.

It’s impossible. Except he is doing it, while wearing the World Champion jersey.

Last Sunday was the Ronde Van Vlanderen (Tour of Flanders) and there were five riders who were on another level. All five of them made it to crux of the race together (with about 20 other riders who also had numbers on their jerseys) when the explosion happened. Up the Oude Kwaremont for the second time they went, 260km in, Pogi pushing the pace. The first to get dropped was Mads Pedersen, not a surprise since he is the biggest, baddest sprinter of the bunch; do not take Mads to the line with you. Over the first rise they went with a 100m respite before the final grunt and Wout couldn’t hold the wheel. More on Wout in a moment.

Two riders were able to stay with Tadej, one glued to his wheel named Mathieu Van Der Poel who would, without doubt, be the greatest classics rider of this generation if it weren’t for Tadej. MVDP is a god of a cyclist; he has won most of the monuments and Grand Tour stages, drives the lambos to prove it, and wins world championships in multiple disciplines, smiling coyly with his chiseled features. But he doesn’t have as nice a Richard Mille watch as Pogi, so is relegated to following when Tadej goes. Remco Evanepoel is a motorbike of a bike racer. He is the most aerodynamic rider today, and likely in history, going faster than anyone on the flats, is learning how to climb and weather punishment doled out by the swifter riders, to bear down after the hills to drag them back into his clutches. But, he was dropped on the second part of the climb and couldn’t claw his way back to the front two of Pogi and MDVP.

Pogi left the second best rider on the planet in his dust the third time up the 20% grade with MVDP revealing to the world that he was riding at 650w, his absolute upper limit, that only one person could exceed. Pogi did and went on to win rather comfortably, 30 seconds to MVDP, 71 seconds to Remco, 125 seconds to Wout, and 168 seconds to Mads.

The third race of the series is this Sunday in northern France, the Hell of the North, Paris-Roubaix. Belgian’s favorite son, known for his humility, devotion to the riders on his team and his incurably, abysmal bad luck is going to have his day and deny Pogi. Wout Van Aert does not wear fancy watches or drive race cars, he is kind and considerate, eternally optimistic, capable of magic on a bike and tragedy when the moment matters the most for him. This Sunday all of that is going to change. Prepare yourselves for the underdog to deservedly get his just reward. It is going to be insane.

Cheers