Tadej Pogačar aims for record third Tour of Flanders title

In search of a record-equalling third Ronde van Vlaanderen title, Tadej Pogačar will lead UAE Team Emirates-XRG at this Sunday’s Tour of Flanders. There, the Slovenian will make his third outing of the campaign, having already won Strade Bianche and Milano-Sanremo.

The latter was Pogačar’s fourth different Monument success, taking the world champion up to 11 wins in the Monument Classics across his palmarès. Amongst those 11 are two memorable victories at the Tour of Flanders, in 2023 and 2025, respectively.

Should the Slovenian defend his title on Sunday, he will join an exclusive list of riders to share the record of three victories at De Ronde, with that club currently counting Achiel Buysse, Fiorenzo Magni, Eric Leman, Johan Museeuw, Tom Boonen, Fabian Cancellara and Mathieu van der Poel as its members.

Since riding to fourth place on his Ronde debut in 2022, Pogačar has found his winning recipe in the second Monument of the season, making his race-defining attack on the Oude Kwaremont in both 2023 and 2025. From there to the finish in Oudenaarde, the UAE Team Emirates-XRG rider has ridden solo for 17km and raised his arms aloft in front of the passionate Belgian crowd.

The 27-year-old will hope to do the same this coming weekend, and heads into Sunday full of confidence from winning the legendary Milano-Sanremo.

Pogačar: “I’m very pleased to be going back to Flanders to defend the title. The way the whole team rode in Milano-Sanremo was so impressive, and if we can carry that into the next few weeks, I think we can achieve some great results.

“Flanders is one of the biggest heartlands of cycling and the energy around this race is something special and a pleasure to be a part of. Since my last race, I’ve been training while also keeping an eye on the racing and cheering on the teammates from home, so I’m excited to be getting stuck into the action again.”

As for this Sunday, Pogačar’s teammates will include Nils Politt – a podium finisher at De Ronde in 2024 – and Florian Vermeersch – a podium finisher at both Omloop Nieuwsblad and the E3 Saxo Classic in recent weeks. The trio will be joined by Mikkel Bjerg, Benoît Cosnefroy, António Morgado, and Rui Oliveira, with Sports Directors Fabio Baldato and Marco Marcato bringing their wealth of experience from the team car.

Alongside Pogačar’s victories, the Tour of Flanders has been a race that has brought UAE Team Emirates-XRG much joy in recent times. Politt was a third-place finisher in 2024, with Alexander Kristoff having matched that result in 2019 and 2020.

As one of cycling’s five Monument Classics, this is a race that never fails to reward the best of the best, and this year’s edition should prove no different.

Beginning in Antwerp, the Tour of Flanders is one of the longest races of the season, clocking in at 278.4km in length. Along the way, plenty of gruelling cobbled bergs prove a formidable challenge, with iconic names such as the Taaienberg, the Molenberg and the Oude Kruisberg on the agenda.

The last 20km are where the race is often decided, over the one-two punch of the Oude Kwaremont and the Paterberg. These two climbs have served as a fitting finale to the race for over a decade, after having replaced the Muur van Geraardsbergen and the Bosberg as Flanders’ final act.

The Oude Kwaremont is the first climb of the Tour of Flanders, falling around halfway into the route, and must be tackled twice more by the riders on Sunday afternoon. It was on the penultimate ascent of the Kwaremont that Pogačar first put the squeeze on his opponents in his two winning rides to date.

From the Kwaremont, the riders swing a left towards the Paterberg, with the gnarly cobbled climb serving as the final test before a 13km flat run-in to Oudenaarde. Of course, this last stretch is no red carpet, with much of it exposed to the wind and proving a tough ask for a lone rider.

With that said, the Tour of Flanders is a race where fortune often favours the brave, as shown by the two-time champion, Pogačar. Heading into Sunday, the Slovenian and his UAE Team Emirates-XRG teammates will hope to put on a show once more.