2021 CLASSICS PREVIEW

The sets and stars of cycling’s very own action movies

A stage race is a soap opera on two wheels. It’s a daily dose of team-work and feuds, one day focusing on one plot line, another the next with a different set of characters, but always setting up something for the next day’s instalment.

The Spring Classics are, on the face of it, a simpler beast. Everyone is concerned with getting themselves or their team leader from start to finish, as quickly as possible. A series of self-contained movies, with an overarching connected thread, the Marvel Cinematic Universe of bike racing.

Like superhero antics there is a brutal side to these races, be it the savagery of the Roubaix cobbles or the sharp gradient of the Mur de Huy. Ultimately, though, it’s the characters, the complexities that lie behind the victories, that keep us coming back and why we will be glued to our seats throughout March and April. Get the popcorn ready.

MATHIEU VAN DER POEL 26 | ALPECIN - FENIX

Best result: 1st Tour of Flanders 2020

Mathieu van der Poel only started regularly riding on the road a couple of years ago, but in that time he’s already rewritten the rules of how Classics are raced. Whether he’s launching ludicrously early attacks or, as at the 2019 Amstel Gold, single-handedly towing a group to the finish and still beating them all in the sprint, the Dutchman continually defies conventional racing logic, but keeps winning anyway.

Having struck the first blow with victory at Strade Bianche, he’ll again go head-to-head against Wout van Aert on the cobbles, renewing what is shaping up to be one of cycling’s all-time great rivalries.