triumphed at Milan-San Remo in March.<\/a><\/p>\nSunday’s victory draws Pogacar level with Van der Poel and six other cyclists on three wins at the Belgian event, having also won in 2023.<\/p>\n
He now has 12 victories in Monuments – the five most prestigious one-day events in men’s road cycling – putting him clear in second in the all-time list behind only 19-time winner Eddy Merckx.<\/p>\n
“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 television.<\/p>\n
“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.<\/p>\n
“Coming next week to Roubaix, I can go motivated, but I try to enjoy the cobbles.”<\/p>\n
On his Flanders debut, double Olympic champion Remco Evenepoel held off fellow Belgian Wout van Aert for third in the 278km race, which features punchy climbs and a number of cobbled sections.<\/p>\n
With 57km left to race Pogacar, Van der Poel and Evenepoel dropped the rest of the field with an acceleration on the second of three ascents up the Oude Kwaremont.<\/p>\n
Evenepoel was left behind on the next climb, the Paterberg, and steadily drifted away from the leading pair, who have won six of the last seven stagings of this event.<\/p>\n
Pogacar and Van der Poel rode together for nearly 40km before the former put in a race-winning push on the final ride up the Oude Kwaremont.<\/p>\n
Having crested the climb with a six-second advantage, the Slovenian world champion pulled away to deny his Dutch rival a record fourth win in the event.<\/p>\n
Pogacar has now won all three of his races this season, and if he finishes first in Paris-Roubaix next weekend, he will become just the fourth man to win all five Monuments after the Belgian trio of Merckx, Rik van Looy and Roger de Vlaeminck.<\/p>\n
He finished second on his debut at the event last year and will face fierce resistance from Van der Poel, who has won the last three Roubaix contests.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Defending champion Tadej Pogacar won a record-equalling third Tour of Flanders in imperious fashion after dropping Mathieu van…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":383539,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-383538","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383538\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/383539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}