Opinion: Tadej Pogacar's podium implosion was unavoidably glorious after enthralling Tour of Flanders

If you walk around Naples with a large wallet in your trousers, then you’re going to get pickpocketed. And this is no different to Grand Tour winners moseying around Oudenaarde with their fancy yellow jerseys on display.

Tadej Pogacar came to his debut cobbled Monument on Sunday off the back of 10th place in Dwars door Vlaanderen during which he showed a whiff of tactical naivety after missing the winning move and being forced to chase potatoes for much of the run into the finish. Ad/> In the Ronde van Vlaanderen, as Pogacar became the first reigning Tour de France champion to ride Flanders since Lance Armstrong in 2005 (or, for the purists, Eddy Merckx in 1975), the Slovenian was caught out by an early bottleneck and hit the deck in a slow-speed crash.

Was the 23-year-old once again betraying his inexperience in the Belgian cobbled classics? Ronde van VlaanderenPogacar’s 'anger' over blunder only further proves his quality – Wiggins42 MINUTES AGO When a select 14-man counter attack materialised from nowhere with 85km remaining, Pogacar and his UAE team-mates were caught napping as the likes of Mads Pedersen, the 2019 winner Alberto Bettiol, and no fewer than three Quick-Step riders went up the road in pursuit of the tiring breakaway. Perhaps this dominator of Grand Tour mountain stages, time trials and hilly classics was in the process of another painful and prolonged wake-up call on the cobbled bergs of Flanders.

Van der Poel wins in Flanders as Pogacar finishes fourth in two-horse race Tour of Flanders, as it happened — Pogacar implodes in finale as Van der Poel wins No such luck. Or, at least, not yet.