Tour of Flanders

For the past few weeks there has been plenty of talk about wunderkind Tadej Pogačar winning the Tour of Flanders in his very first outing. And he very nearly did, coming incredibly close to cracking Mathieu van der Poel on the cobbled Flemish climbs, but ultimately falling short in a bungled final kilometer, becoming, humorously put, the first man to ever come fourth in a two-man sprint. OJ Borg, Peter Cossins and Jeremey Whittle are back for another episode of Aérogramme to discuss the second monument of the season, and there’s a lot to go over. Pogačar showed some uncharacteristic tactical flaws and a reaction to losing that looked more becoming of his 23 years than we’re used to seeing. “He suddenly looked his age,” says Jeremy Whittle of Pogačar’s reaction to getting fourth. Was this loss for Pogačar good for cycling? On the flip side, Mathieu van der Poel seems to have learned the tough lessons of his narrow defeat at last year’s Tour of Flanders, pulling off an excellent race and looking in control through the final sprint.How does this year’s race stack up against the many great editions over the years? And for that matter how does the Tour of Flanders stack up against the other four Monuments? We dive in to those questions and more.In the women’s race, Lotte Kopecky won Belgium’s biggest race in the national champion’s jersey after an excellent race by her SD Worx team. We discuss how the women’s race went down and the differing tactics employed between the men’s and women’s editions. There’s also discussion of the just announced Netflix series covering this summer’s Tour de France. What do we hope to see from the series being produced by the same people behind the wildly popular “Drive to Survive” Formula 1 series?Tune in for the full conversation.