Tadej Pogačar has won the 107th Tour of Flanders, underlining his status as one of this generation's premier road cyclists.
The 2020 and 2021 Tour de France champion survived a number of huge crashes that saw several riders abandon with injuries.
Despite getting caught up in the carnage, Pogačar kept himself injury-free and rode away from his two big rivals, Dutch two-time champion Mathieu van der Poel and Belgian Wout van Aert, soloing to victory with 17 kilometres to go on the gruelling 273km race through northern Belgium.
The Slovenian rider finished the race in six hours, 12 minutes and one second, 17 seconds ahead of an exhausted van der Poel.
Danish rider Mads Pederson just pipped van Aert in the sprint for third, a minute and 13 seconds behind.
"I knew that to go solo I needed to go on the Kwaremont the last time, I just gave it all," Pogačar said after the race.
"I knew that it was going to be tough but it was the only way to go to the finish."
This was Pogačar's 16th day of racing in 2023. It was his tenth victory.
Only two men have ever won the Tour de France and the one-day Tour of Flanders: French legend Louison Bobet in 1955 and Belgian Eddy Merckx, who won his second Tour of Flanders in 1975.
The two-time Tour de France champion and grand tour specialist now has won three of the five one-day monuments and, at just 24 years old, still has plenty more racing to come in his career, including regaining his Tour de France title later in the year.
"I think he was unbeatable today," van der Poel said of Pogačar, who added that it was probably his best ever performance in "the Ronde" but he just didn't have enough to go with his younger rival.
The Tour of Flanders had been hyped as a battle between three of cycling's most complete riders: Pogačar (24 years old), van der Poel (28) and van Aert (28).
They did not disappoint.
This trio have been going at each other, hammer and tongs, since the start of the year, serving up some superb racing at one-day races across Europe.
Van der Poel claimed victory in the first monument of the year at Milan-San Remo, while van Aert won the E3 Saxo Classic.
It took the trio a while to come together in earnest, but Pogačar attacked on the Kwaremont climb with just over 50km to go.
A further acceleration on the Koppenberg broke the rest of the chasers and set up his 17km solo effort.
Pogačar said he could already consider his season a success, even joking that he can retire and be proud of his career.
He added that he would not rule out challenging for the two monuments missing from his collection — Paris-Roubaix and Milan-San Remo — later in his career.
Rapid pace, crashes mar first half of race
A rapid opening hour — the fastest ever by almost 5km per hour — ensured that no breakaway could form due to the helter-skelter nature of the peloton.
The race was typified by a number of big crashes, with almost every team affected by some brutal shunts.
Cross winds caused an early split that had van der Poel in the second group, before a crash saw Pogačar caught out and forced into chasing back on.
That crash saw Dutch rider Danny van Poppel abandon but was far from the worst as the peloton became jittery as they approached the major obstacles of cobbles, vertiginous climbs and combination of the two that characterise the historic Flemish monument.
Polish rider for Bahrain Victorious, Filip Maciejuk, caused the biggest pile up though, after he was caught wide of the peloton. With the paved area of the road coming to an end, he was forced through the grass, where a puddle of water careered his bike back into the middle of the road, and into the peloton at full pace.
Several riders went down and a number were forced to abandon with their injuries.
Maciejuk was subsequently disqualified from the race and issued an apology on twitter in which he described his move as "a big error" in judgement.
"I'm really sorry for my mistake and causing the crash today. I hope all those involved are in good health," Maciejuk wrote.
"This should not happen and was a big error in my judgement."
Former pro-cyclist Mark Renshaw said the crash was difficult to watch.
"Hurts to watch huge crashes likes this, Filip Maciejuk deserves being thrown out of the race," he wrote.
"I'd give him a couple of extra weeks out to think about that move and hopefully prevent other young riders doing the same."
In a separate incident, Eritrean outside bet Biniam Girmay also came down hard in a crash as the race took its toll.
