Four Things To Know About The Tour Of Flanders

Bruges, Belgium, April 1 (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 1st Apr, 2023 ) :The 107th Tour of Flanders takes place on Sunday and has all the ingredients to pull in the crowds, especially on its 19 hills.

Home favourite Wout van Aert, Dutch rider Mathieu van der Poel and two-time Tour de France champion Tadej Pogacar are the men to beat.

Here, AFP Sport takes a look at some of the key aspects of one of the great classic races.

- Winners - The first Tour of Flanders took place on May 25, 1913 and was won by local rider Paul Deman.

Since then six riders have managed to win the race three times -- Belgians Achiel Buysse, Eric Leman, Johan Museeuw and Tom Boonen, Italian Fiorenzo Magni and Swiss Fabian Cancellara.

With two wins already under his belt, Van der Poel has his eyes firmly set on joining this elite band.

- Just like Eddy - Eddy Merckx won the Tour of Flanders in 1969 and went on to win his first Tour de France later that year. The great Belgian remains the last man to have achieved that double, winning Flanders again in 1975.

The closest Pogacar, Tour de France winner in 2020 and 2021, came to breaking that run was last year when he was out-thought and outgunned by Van der Poel.

Pogacar could only manage fourth. A couple of months later he was denied a third successive Tour de France as well by the Dane Jonas Vingegaard.

Pogacar's climbing skills, racing acumen and winning attitude, however, make him a perfect candidate to make amends and take over the mantle on Sunday.

- The Famous Five - There are five long one-day bike races known as the Monuments and opinion varies as to which is the greatest.

Milan-San Remo calls for patience, the Tour of Flanders is a war of attrition and Paris-Roubaix is usually a mud fest with perilous stretches of rough-hewn cobbles.

Liege-Bastogne-Liege winds its way through forested lanes of the Ardennes while the Tour of Lombardy is a climbers' classic.

The five have widely varying challenges and for those who believe Flanders to be the greatest, it is because of the constant series of steep, narrow climbs.

After the 114km mark, there is a cobbled hill every 8km or so, constantly whittling down the field.

- Massive following -While Liege is the older race, and a game of cat-and-mouse through the forests, Flanders is almost an unofficial Belgian national holiday with 750,000 people expected to turn up on the route.

Each hillside in the latter part of the race is turned into a giant makeshift party-pub, with beer tents and food caravans galore before an after-party that goes on into the night.