triumphed at Milan-San Remo in March.<\/a><\/p>\nSunday’s victory draws Pogacar level with Mathieu 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, <\/b>double Olympic champion 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<\/div>\n
\n
Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Defending champion Tadej Pogacar won a record-equalling third Tour of Flanders, but could face action after he was one of up to 20 riders who ran a red light at a railway crossing. The East Flanders public prosecutor told BBC Sport it was investigating the incident which happened with more than 200km (124 miles) left […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27915,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cycling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27914"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27914\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27916,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27914\/revisions\/27916"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}