As Mathieu van der Poel soloed his way to victory at the Tour of Flanders on Sunday, powering towards Oudenaarde with victory in sight, the group of Dutch or Belgian fans in front of me in the fan zone on the Oude Kwaremont turned around and accosted me and my friends for not clapping vociferously enough for the new champion.
Maybe it was the grim weather or the fact we had been standing in the same bit of Belgian bog for three hours by this point, but none of us seemed particularly enamoured by Van der Poel’s third win at De Ronde, his third in just five editions, in fact. It was a seriously impressive ride given everything, and potentially Van der Poel’s best victory, but it didn’t fill us with the excitement we craved.
