One of cycling’s modern greats cemented his legacy on Sunday, as Slovenian superstar Tadej Pogacar outmatched defending champion Mathieu van der Poel to secure a joint-record third Tour of Flanders title, cementing his status as one of the most successful one-day classic riders in history. The 27-year-old four-time Tour de France winner dropped his primary Dutch rival with just 18 kilometers remaining on the punishing 278-kilometer route, which winds across punchy climbs and multiple rugged cobbled sectors across northern Belgium.
Heading into the race, Van der Poel had been poised to break records and claim a fourth Tour of Flanders crown, but it was Pogacar who extended an undefeated 2025 season to extend his historic career tally. With Sunday’s win, Pogacar now holds 12 victories in cycling’s five Monument races — the sport’s most prestigious one-day events — putting him alone in second place on the all-time winner’s list, trailing only Belgian legend Eddy Merckx, who retired with 19 Monument titles to his name.
The win also marks Pogacar’s second Monument victory of the early 2025 season, following his win at Milan-San Remo last month. He has entered and won all three races he has competed in this year, and heads into next weekend’s Paris-Roubaix with a chance to make more history: a victory at the cobbled classic would make him just the fourth male rider in cycling history to win all five Monuments, joining an exclusive club that includes Merckx, Rik Van Looy, and Roger De Vlaeminck. On his Paris-Roubaix debut last year, Pogacar finished second behind Van der Poel, who claimed a third straight title.
“It was a really crazy race today, I don’t know what to say: super-hard from I don’t know which kilometre,” Pogacar told Belgian broadcaster after crossing the finish line. “I don’t race too much, so when I race there is pressure to win. So far everything went perfect for me, so I can be more than happy. Coming next week to Roubaix, I can go motivated, but I try to enjoy the cobbles.”
Billed as a head-to-head clash between four of cycling’s biggest stars, the men’s race played out exactly as pre-race analysis predicted, with Pogacar ultimately proving too strong for the competition, even as Van der Poel — one of the greatest cobbled classics specialists of all time — pushed him to the final kilometers. Pogacar first launched an acceleration on the second ascent of the iconic Oude Kwaremont climb with 57km left to race, dropping every competitor except Van der Poel and Belgian double Olympic champion Remco Evenepoel, who was making his Tour of Flanders debut.
Evenepoel was quickly dropped on the very next climb, the Paterberg, and despite staying within a few seconds of the leading pair early, he gradually faded over the closing kilometers, ultimately finishing third more than a minute behind Pogacar, ahead of another top Belgian star Wout van Aert in fourth.
Pogacar and Van der Poel rode side-by-side for nearly 40 kilometers after the elimination of Evenepoel, before the Slovenian made his decisive race-winning attack on the final ascent of Oude Kwaremont. He crossed the climb’s crest with a six-second advantage, and Van der Poel’s challenge was broken, with the Dutch rider losing more time all the way to the finish line.
The day’s breakaway formed within the first 40 kilometers of the race, when 13 riders including Mongolia’s Sainbayaryn Jambaljamts escaped the peloton, building a maximum lead of five-and-a-half minutes after the main peloton was delayed at a level crossing. That gap held steady for more than 100 kilometers before the general classification teams upped the pace to bring the break back. With just over 100 kilometers remaining, Pogacar’s UAE Team Emirates teammates pushed the pace on the Molenberg climb, splitting the peloton and forming a 15-rider chase group containing all the pre-race favorites, who caught the breakaway with just under 80km left, holding a lead of more than one minute over the main peloton for the rest of the race. From that point, it was only a matter of whether any rider could match Pogacar’s strength on the closing climbs — and no contender could keep up.
In the women’s edition of the race, European champion Demi Vollering mirrored Pogacar’s winning performance, dropping her rivals on the final Oude Kwaremont ascent to claim a solo victory. The 2023 Tour de France Femmes winner crossed the finish line of the 164-kilometer route with a 45-second advantage over France’s Pauline Ferrand-Prevot, who outsprinted Netherlands’ Puck Pieterse to take second place. The win gives Vollering her third career Monument victory, adding to two previous titles at Liege-Bastogne-Liege. Three-time defending champion Lotte Kopecky finished just outside the podium in fourth.